


Skipping Tracks

by Cyborgtamaki, thirteeninafez



Series: Through the Rift [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 02, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Ianto Jones, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Temporary Character Death, don't worry there is a sequel, don't yell at us when this is over like you did with time tracks, original episodes, we promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29084364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyborgtamaki/pseuds/Cyborgtamaki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteeninafez/pseuds/thirteeninafez
Summary: “I bring life.”The words faded but the warmth stayed, growing hotter and hotter until every fibre of his being was screaming. It was like being exterminated all over again, only this time in reverse. Once again, the pain spiralled across his body through synapses and veins. His entire body felt like it was on fire, being dragged through burning coals. It was getting more concentrated, reigning itself in until his fingers and toes were just tingling with numbness and the fire centred itself in his abdomen, burning him from the inside, right where he had been shot.He inhaled sharply, and the fire was doused.He was alive.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: Through the Rift [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796905
Comments: 126
Kudos: 90





	1. Finding Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Title: Jack Steals Handcuffs for 'Reasons'

“Run!”

Ianto Jones, from his position crouched on the dirty floor behind his best friend Rose, barely had time to register the Time Lord running towards them, or the blue glow of a silver weapon pointed towards said Time Lord, before a hand on his shoulder pulled him sharply upwards and successfully got him standing flat on his feet. Ianto sprung into motion, his legs kicking out to chase after a billowing RAF coat and the sprinting man that it belonged to. He grabbed Rose’s hand, pulling her along with them as they picked up pace. Confident that she would keep him on track, Ianto turned to look back at the Doctor and saw him racing to catch up. Behind, there was a gaggle of guards clad in black armour, each holding a glowing blue gun in their arms. The closest to them was beginning to fall behind as the Doctor peeled away with his quick, gangly legs.

The blue light in the centre of the nearest gun began to intensify, getting whiter and whiter until it started to hum with energy. In a split second, Ianto found an extra burst of energy and reached out to grab a fistful of Jack’s coat, pulling him sharply into the wall on their left. Rose saw his movement, and was close enough to follow suit and yank the Doctor to the wall with her. No sooner had they shifted to the left, a quick pulse of energy shot from the gun and whizzed past the hairs on Ianto’s head, scorching the tips.

There wasn’t time to pause. Jack pointed to a corridor on the right, diving for the safety it provided. The blue shots rained across the space they had just vacated.

“No staircases that way, then?” Ianto asked breathlessly as they made their way as quickly as possible across the corridor, skidding to the right as they found a new turning. Behind him, Ianto could hear the armoured guards' feet slapping the ground heavily. They had to turn wherever possible to avoid getting caught in crossfire.

“None. Just a lump of security guards,” the Doctor said, sounding less like he was running for his life and more like he was jogging in the park on a Sunday morning in Splott. “They didn’t take kindly to an intruder. Which is hardly surprising, seeing as we’re breaking into a top security prison.”

“For good reason,” Rose pointed out, then caught sight of the shadow of a guard turning the corner behind them. “Turn left!”

They peeled off to the left, finding themselves in a twisted corridor with barred doors on both sides. Judging by the variety of noises coming from them, Ianto supposed these must be keeping the prisoners - though, judging by the small width of the cells, he suspected they were likely holding cells rather than permanent fixtures. (He didn’t particularly fancy stopping to find out.)

From the front of the line, Jack came to a dramatic halt. Ianto hit him hard as his legs carried him forwards with momentum, and let out a loud “oof.” He stumbled to a standstill.

“Woah, careful there handsome,” Jack spoke, peeling the Welshman away from where he was almost fully embracing his back. “Time and a place.”

He grinned cheekily at Ianto, then jumped into motion again, sprinting through a doorway labelled ‘storage’. The room they found themselves in was dark and musky, cramped with boxes and displays of various items that Ianto had no idea the purpose of.

“There’s a door at the other end of this room,” the Doctor shouted, pointing to the only beam of light filtering through a window.

“Come on, let’s go!” Rose shouted, moving to take the lead whilst the others paused for a second to catch their breath. Before his feet had a chance to kid themselves into thinking there would be a reprieve, Ianto got them moving again. His suit felt tight against his body, and he was very much regretting not leaving his waistcoat and tie (at least) back on the Tardis. As it was, all he could do was reach up and pull at his tie to try to loosen the strain on his throat, his fingers fumbling too much to attempt to undo any buttons.

They raced past a collection of non-lethal weapons, only pausing when Rose threw out her hands.

“Baton?” She asked, picking up a black baton and offering it to the other three.

“Already have my gun,” Ianto pointed out.

“I refuse to use a weapon!” the Doctor said, looking horrified.

Rose rolled her eyes and turned to look at Jack. He shook his head. “I’ve already grabbed a gun. But I’ll take some handcuffs.”

“What for? We’re not exactly here to arrest someone,” the Doctor asked.

Jack grinned. “Oh, no. They’re for recreational use, once we get out of here - right, Ianto?”

His leer was interrupted by a loud crash from outside. Their eyes met for a second, and then the four of them were on the move once more. 

Their feet thundered through the exit of the storage room, hitting a metal grating in a new, colder corridor which blinked with bright lights. Their shortcut through the previous room seemed to have confused the guards, as there were none in sight down the long new corridor. From the back of the group, Ianto pulled metal cabinets down from the side of the hallway, ensuring that anybody who followed them would be slowed down.

“Stairs!” Rose shouted, her grin infectious through her voice as it carried across the corridor. They began to climb the spiral of stairs. Ianto stuck his head out in the middle to see how far they had to go before they reached floor five, but instead locked eyes with the glaring, furious face of a guard. He pulled his head back. There were still a few levels between them and the prison workers.

“Guards above!” he shouted to his friends, catching up to them despite his protesting calf muscles. He heard Rose groan.

“How far?” the Doctor asked him.

“A few levels. We can make it to the second floor, I’m sure, but the third may be pushing it.”

He nodded. “Then we leave on the third.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. At least he hadn't suggested they could reach the fourth floor. He had no doubts that the Doctor would’ve pushed them to get to the highest floor possible before they left the stairs, so Ianto had made sure to underestimate. Unlike the maniac who claimed to be in charge, _he_ didn’t have a death wish.

“Come on!” Rose shouted, holding the door to the third floor open for her companions to race through. They raced past her, not knowing where they were headed other than away from the guards who were hot on their tails. Something small but loud was thrown at them, rolling and clanging off the floor as it settled just behind where they were running. Between the hissing noise it was making and the sequential beeps, the group realised what it was seconds before it started to whine loudly.

“In here!” the Doctor shouted in a panic, shoving himself through a door. His three friends hurried through, Ianto and Jack at the back being thrown suddenly forwards as a pulse of energy shot out of the object as it exploded. Rose caught hold of them before they could fall over, pulling them up again to run back out and into the corridor when she realised the room they were in was a dead end.

They had almost made it to the turn in the corridor when the shooting started again. Shots whizzed past them, leaving scorch marks where they hit the wall. Suddenly Ianto pitched forwards and cried out in pain. Heat blossomed from his ankle, causing his leg to give out as he tried to take another step on his right foot, and he tumbled to the ground. His friends whipped around, pausing in their tracks.

“Ianto!” Jack exclaimed, his face frozen in alarm. Jack reached forwards, grabbing Ianto under the armpits and lifting him back up on his feet. The shots continued to fire, and Jack dragged him past the turn in the corridor and into cover. Ianto leaned against the wall, gingerly trying to put a tiny bit of his weight on his injured leg, but a flare of pain nearly whitened his vision. He wobbled, and reached back out to hold Jack’s shoulder in support.

“Ianto! Oh, God,” Rose said, looking down at his leg. Ianto braced himself as he too looked downwards, trying to keep himself from throwing up as he saw his skin blackened and scorched with red, bubbling blisters that spread across his wound. He steeled his gaze and looked back up.

“We need to keep moving.”

“You can’t walk,” the Doctor pointed out.

“Then leave without me. Go to floor five and find cell one hundred and nine,” he said resolutely.

The Doctor wavered, but it was Jack that spoke next. “Absolutely not. We’re not leaving you behind.”

Ianto felt an arm snake around his waist and moved his own arm to more comfortably sit on top of Jack’s shoulders. The ex-Time Agent shouted at the Doctor and Rose to keep going, and began to hobble his way forwards. Ianto bit his lip to stop himself from crying out every time his leg was jostled. He was surprised by how quickly Jack was moving them, but even as they moved across the corridor he could hear the feet behind him getting closer. Despite this, the pain in his ankle was ever so slightly beginning to ebb away, which _could_ be due to the adrenaline racing through him - or, perhaps due to something else entirely, which he had absolutely _no_ time to think about at all in the current situation.

Narrowly escaping any other injuries, they stepped through a door into a wide chamber. It was dark as they began to make their way over to the other end. Suddenly the lights turned on in the room. The exit they were running towards was blocked by guards. Ianto turned his head around to look behind him at the entrance they had come in from, which was now _also_ blocked by the guards that had been chasing close behind them.

“We’re trapped,” he alerted his friends, carefully coming to a stop in the center of the room.

“Hands up!” one of the guards shouted, pointing his weapon directly at them. The other guards followed suit, moving further into the room so that they encircled the four people trying to break into their prison. Ianto looked at the Doctor, seeing his eyes flicker as he searched for an escape. Judging by the way they dimmed and his hands began to move above his head, he couldn’t find one.

Slowly, the others put their own hands up, Ianto leaving one on Jack’s back for support as he felt his ankle dully throb still. Everything went silent, and all he could hear was the sound of their own out-of-breath panting and guns cocking. He turned to keep an eye on the guards closest to him, as he mumbled:

“Why did we agree to do this, again?”

_Three hours earlier_

It wasn’t like Ianto was _purposefully_ ignoring Jack...

More like, he was avoiding the inevitable questions about Satellite Five that Jack would ask him.

The battle at Satellite Five hung deeply yet heavily in Ianto's mind. It was as if the memories and thoughts he didn’t yet want to think about or confront lay guarded by a cover in his brain; as if Ianto could pretend not to think about them and keep them at bay. Whilst he busied himself about the small Tardis kitchen, or lost his mind in a book from the plethora of titles in the library, his brain could keep him happy and complacent. The second he stopped and actually _thought_ , or locked eyes with the nervous, ever-questioning look on Jack’s face, he was transported back to the satellite and made to think about the Dalek coming towards him, and-

This was why Ianto found himself very pleased to be distracted by a warning noise coming from the Tardis console.

“It’s mauve!” the Doctor shouted, racing around to reach the screen and figure out what was going on.

“Mauve?” Rose asked, popping her head into the room as she walked over to join them. Jack followed close behind her, moving to stand in between the Doctor and Ianto. Rose put her head on the Doctor’s shoulder. “No, wait- mauve. The universally recognised colour for danger.”

“I’m feeling a sense of déjà vu,” Ianto muttered, moving to the Doctor’s other side so he too could see the screen. There was a flashing warning sign, and below it a loading bar which was progressing slowly.

“Unlike last time, this warning has sent us a message,” the Doctor explained. “The Tardis is decrypting it as we speak.”

“I’m assuming the ‘last time’ was me?” Jack asked, putting a hand on Ianto’s shoulder that the Welshman couldn’t bring himself to shrug off. After all, there was a distraction on the screen which prevented thoughts from bubbling to the surface of his mind.

“Yup,” Rose answered Jack. “You’re not playing a joke on us, right?”

He let out a laugh. “Now, why would I want to do that?”

“No idea,” Ianto quipped sarcastically. “You’ve never been particularly funny before this point.”

“Hey!” Jack said, as Ianto heard rather than saw the pout he knew was on his face.

The Doctor shushed them, pointing at the screen which was now flashing white as the loading bar reached its limit. For a second it went blank, but then a few lines of text appeared.

_STORMCAGE, FLOOR 5, CELL 109_

_COME FIND ME, SWEETIE XX_

The Doctor read the message out loud, frowning at the words. Ianto paused, digesting the message.

“What’s a Stormcage?” he asked.

“It’s one of the highest security prisons in the whole of the galaxy,” Jack explained. “Who’s contacting you from there, Doctor?”

“I don’t know…” the Time Lord murmured, flicking a switch and typing on the console’s keyboard. Ianto had never noticed the Doctor use the keyboard before, wondering if it was another slight change that had come with this new version of the Doctor. He had only just gotten used to the absence of milk and addition of copious amounts of sugar in his new coffee order.

“Can you track the signal?” Ianto questioned.

“Trying to,” the Doctor called back, running to the other side of the console as he pressed a variety of buttons. He rejoined them a few seconds later, pulling the screen closer to examine the result. His face didn’t change, however, and he moved back towards the other side of the console as if to recalibrate it. Ianto had a split second to read the number ‘5149’ followed by a string of random text before it blinked off once more. He felt the hand on his shoulder stiffen, and then Jack let go of him altogether.

“Doctor,” Jack said very slowly. Ianto turned to look at him, recognising the voice as a hint towards Jack being specifically worried about something. “What did that screen just say?”

“Some year in the fifty-second century,” the Doctor unhelpfully replied. He appeared to be more focused on his console than the conversation. “The Tardis is struggling to translate the text afterwards.”

“Get the screen back,” Jack ordered. The three others in the room stopped and stared at his serious, set face.

“Why?” the Doctor challenged, standing up straight.

“Because I said so. Do it.”

They stared at each other for another thirty seconds, as if waiting for the other to break first. Eventually, the Doctor appeared to sense something in Jack’s expression, because he gave in and pulled up the same message again.

Jack stared intensely at the text. He let out a soft gasp and turned back to face the others. “That message came from my Vortex Manipulator.”

Their jaws dropped. Rose let out a faint laugh. “You’re joking. Tell me this actually _is_ one of your jokes.”

Jack shook his head. “No. I recognise the transfer signature,” he said seriously, pressing a button on the Vortex Manipulator on his arm as he held it up to scan the screen.

“How is that possible?” the Doctor demanded, rounding on him. “I thought I disabled the time travelling functions on it.”

“No idea, but it matches for sure,” Jack said, looking down at the readings on his wrist strap. “I’ve worked out the exact date here.”

“Did you send the message?”

Jack laughed, though his smile didn’t reach his cheeks. “When have you ever known me to use the word ‘sweetie’? Or end my messages with kisses?”

“He has a point,” Ianto agreed. “Can you feed the time signature back into the Tardis?”

Jack grinned at him. “You bet.”

“Hold on, hold on,” the Doctor interrupted with a frown. “Now that we know it’s from _your_ Vortex Manipulator, that changes things. We can’t be too careful. What if it really _is_ you sending the message?”

“It isn’t. I’ll promise you right now that I’ll never send you that message in my future.”

“That won’t stop you. Words are meaningless when it comes to predicting the future,” the Doctor said ominously.

“Look, if we go there we’re gonna find one of two scenarios. One: it _is_ me, and I need your help getting out of jail. You can keep me away from my future self and find out whether or not I deserve letting out.”

“And two?” Rose asked.

“Two: it’s _not_ me, and a device which can meddle with the fabric of time is in the hands of someone who shouldn’t ever be anywhere near something that powerful.”

There was a silence as everybody in the room considered his words. After a few moments of thought, Ianto broke first. “I think we should follow the signal.”

“I agree,” Rose added.

The three of them stared at the Time Lord in front of them. “Please, Doctor,” Jack begged.

The Doctor wavered, and finally sagged his shoulders. “Send the coordinates to the Tardis, then. We have a prison to break into.”

_Three hours later_

After thirty seconds of silence while the intruders stared at the multitude of guns pointed towards them, Ianto felt Jack suddenly move into action. Jack pointed his arm at the ceiling, and then with a loud bang a shot rang out, hitting the light above and casting the room once more into darkness.

“Scatter!” Jack shouted, and all four of them dropped to the ground as blue pulses of energy shot out of the guns, hitting each other in the middle of the room and shooting sparks above their head. Then there was darkness once more, the noises of guns and barks of orders coming from the soldiers around them. Trying to remember the direction where there had been the least guards, Ianto grabbed the closest arm and pulled it with him towards the edge of the room. He held hands with a small, soft hand and assumed he had pulled Rose away. Her grip tightened, and they barged past a heavy body.

Pain from his ankle was still shooting through him, but he could run on his leg without collapsing now, which was _definitely_ an improvement from five minutes earlier. It must've been from the adrenaline. His free arm fumbled around as it hit the wall, and he moved quickly along the edge of the room, trailing his arm out to feel for a doorway. As soon as he reached it, he slipped as quickly and carefully through it as he possibly could, blinking his eyes to adjust to the sudden light outside.

“Quick!” Rose shouted, emerging behind him. She pulled them down the corridor, until she could drag Ianto with her behind a tall metal storage unit. They held their breath as the guards hurried out of the room. 

For a second, Ianto was absolutely certain that the guards were going to see them. He caught a glimpse of movement and then a formation of five passed next to them, moving quickly down the hallway. None of them gave the storage unit a second glance, and after the noises of their feet marching had fallen away, they let themselves out of their hiding place.

“Now, _that_ was a close one,” Rose said, pausing with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Ianto agreed, brushing his crumpled suit down to force the wrinkles out of the material. 

“Right. Stairs?”

Rose nodded in agreement. “Let’s not waste time finding the others. We can find cell one-oh-nine ourselves and get out of this place.”

“Agreed.”

They moved stealthily across the floor they were on, pausing at the end of each corridor to check for movement before they continued onwards. They passed a window to a dark room. Ianto jolted in horror as he saw the Doctor, cuffs on his wrists as a tall guard kept a strong hand on the scruff of his neck. Rose paused as she too caught sight of the situation. She turned to look questioningly at Ianto, who shook his head back.

“No time. We can come back for him later,” he decided, moving forwards again.

“But he could be in danger!”

Ianto shot her what he hoped was a reassuring glance. “He’s the Doctor - he’s always in danger.”

“And if that was Jack?” she challenged. Ianto fixed her a wry grin.

“Then I’d laugh and leave him to the guard’s mercy,” he said, reaching for her hand to both drag her forwards and reassure her. He squeezed her palm in his own. “They’ll both be fine, I promise. It’s the guards I’m more worried for.”

She grinned back at him, accepting his point, and pressed on. When they reached the staircase for the second time, Ianto was relieved to see it devoid of guards. Ignoring the complaints from his ankle, he raced up the stairs two at a time, letting go of Rose’s hand to instead grab the handrail to help propel him upwards. They made it to the fifth floor in less than ten seconds, the four lengths of stairs between the third floor and their destination proving no opponent against their determination to find out who had contacted the Tardis.

As they entered the new floor, Ianto allowed himself to consider what would happen if they opened the doors to the cell and were faced with an older version of Jack. It could either be a version of him from before they met at Torchwood Three, or…

No, wait. Torchwood Three didn’t exist. For whatever reason, when they had visited Cardiff there had been no sight of the hidden base, and if _that_ wasn’t confusing Ianto then nothing else ever would. And yet, when he had stormed into Van Statten’s base and used his Torchwood credentials to gain access, he hadn’t had any qualms about the existence of Torchwood Three. Sure, he hadn’t been able to access the records of agents, but there had still been a database for him to _try_ to hack into. His head swam and he shook it. That was beside the point. If they met a future version of Jack, no matter which of the four of them saw him it would still be a violation of the laws of time travel. And anyhow - they weren’t yet sure of who was contacting them. Just because the signal came from his own Vortex Manipulator, it didn’t mean it had to be Jack in the cell.

His thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, so Ianto tried to focus on the job at hand. Make it to the cell. Run through the corridor, which was currently holding large, wide prison cells - but still in only double digits. He raced past, reading the number 43 on the closest one, and they continued to run forwards. As they reached the end of the line, the last cell finished at the number 99.

“Through here!” Rose shouted, having pushed open the doors at the end of the hallway to step into a foyer. She was pointing towards another wing, with the title ‘Cells 100 -110, High-Risk Convicts’. Ianto raised an eyebrow at that, but continued to follow his friend into the new hallway.

The cells here looked roomy and almost homely, if it wasn’t for the heavy set locked doors. He passed various cells, unable to see inside, but as he reached the eighth room he saw that the door was wide open. The two of them slowed down, expecting danger, but were surprised when they saw a woman with a big nest of curly blonde hair sitting calmly on her bed. She was writing in an open, blue notebook which Ianto presumed was a diary of sorts, and as she registered their presence she turned to them, giving them a wink and a smirk which rivalled even Jack’s.

The woman lifted her hand, pointing with one long finger to the cell directly beyond them, nodding as if to direct them. Rose and Ianto exchanged a glance, and decided it best to continue with their own plan: reaching cell one hundred and nine and finding out who was inside.

Rose pushed the door, unsurprisingly finding it solid and unmoving. They registered the lock, noting the futuristic looking security it was guarded with.

“How are we gonna unlock this?” Rose asked, exasperated. Ianto gave her a grin, reaching into his pocket to pull out a circular device which was barely bigger than his palm. As he held it up towards the lock, he felt a warm feeling fall through him at the memory of his friend Sally, silently thanking her for showing him the archive where he had found this device.

The metal began to meld to the lock, moving until it let out a series of clicking noises. The red indicator on the side of the lock changed to green, and the door shuddered quietly as it finished unlocking itself. Ianto pulled the device away and put it back in his pocket, turning to Rose.

“You ready?”

She grinned. “Always.”

Together, they pulled the door outwards until it was as wide as possible on its hinge. The room beyond was dark, and it took a moment for Ianto’s eyes to adjust to the lack of light. As soon as he did, his vision fixed on the figure in front of them, slouching on the furthest wall with a lazy smile on his frighteningly familiar face. The air caught in Ianto’s throat. No. It wasn’t-

“Well, well, well, what _have_ I done to deserve this piece of eye candy coming to my rescue?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!!! We have returned with another installment in this series!!!  
> So, who do you think it is? I (Remi) am so excited for you guys to read this double-episode, seven chaptered chaotic monster of an original story! :) Lauren wants me to mention that it is her favourite one...  
> These episodes may possibly go against canon that I have not seen yet, but it is our own interpretation! I really hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> We really appreciate every comment and kudos you guys give us! Give the fic a bookmark/subscribe to be notified of any updates, which will be happening every Sunday (hopefully - just in case life gets in the way aha!)  
> Follow us on tumblr @garknessandbones @thirteeninafez


	2. Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re My Only Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You’re My Only Hoe

There was a singular moment where everything in the cell fell silent. The only moving part in the entire room was Ianto’s brain, which couldn’t help but cycle through the three same words.

Captain John Hart.

It took Rose taking a tentative step forwards for Ianto to jump into action. His instincts kicked in, a base reaction to the dangerous red coat of the prisoner. He took two steps forwards, blind fury appearing from deep inside him, and the next thing he felt was a throbbing that pulsed through his fist and a surprised noise of pain coming from Hart.

“Have we met?” the convict asked, ghosting a hand across his jaw as he assessed the damage. “Only, I don’t think I’d forget a face like yours. Or that left hook.”

Ianto growled and pitched forwards again. He threw out another punch, but his fist was caught and parried by John. Hart twisted it around until he was holding it dead against Ianto’s back. The Welshman kicked his leg out from his pinned position, succeeding in knocking his opposition backwards and causing Hart to stumble unevenly. Ianto’s arm was released in the commotion.

John let out a manic laugh. “Feisty little one, aren’t you?”

“Nothing about me is little,” Ianto retorted, squaring up to attack again.

John leered, looking him up and down. “Oh, I bet…”

Ianto glowered and tried to hit John again, but was stopped by an arm in between the fighting duo.

“Stop it!” Rose cried, pulling Ianto back. “Ianto. Who is this guy?”

“Someone from my past, who evidently hasn’t met me yet,” he said, glaring sharply at Hart as he bounced slowly on the balls of his feet. “Captain John Hart. Ex-Time Agent. Current pain in the arse.”

 _“Captain_ John Hart? Oh,” John remarked, eyebrows raised with a contemplative look on his face. “Oh. I like that a lot, eye candy. Can I keep it? Pretty please?”

He batted his eyelids at him, and Ianto had to resist the urge to punch him again. “You really don’t know me then?”

“Trust me, I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t forget a face like yours. Or yours, for that matter,” he said, turning his gaze to Rose. He reached for her hand and kissed it softly, bending low. “Captain John Hart, at your service.” He looked playfully between the two of them, noting their unimpressed expressions. “Oh, come on, it sounds cool. You’ve gotta admit it.”

“Sounds very similar to someone else I know,” Rose pointed out, turning to raise an eyebrow at Ianto. After a quick conversation through glances, Ianto silently promised to explain everything later.

John looked pointedly between the two of them. “Shall I give you some alone time? Or,” he continued, hurrying his face into a smirk. “Maybe I could join in with your ‘alone time’? I love it when life gives me a gorgeous couple to play with.”

Rose jolted back. “You’re disgusting.”

“Just you wait until my actual boyfriend gets here…” Ianto muttered.

“The more the merrier,” John winked, taking a step closer towards the pair.

“We don’t have time for this,” Ianto decided, taking a step away from Hart, like a twisted tango. “You think that device can lock doors as well as unlocking them?”

Rose shrugged, but John began to protest. “Hey! Hang on! You’re meant to rescue me, not leave me here.”

“Tough,” Ianto harshly responded. “You’re one of the few people I know who I’d be happy to leave to rot in a jail cell forever.”

“Ouch. That hurts. Is whatever I do to you in the future really that bad?” John asked. He took Ianto’s livid glare as an answer. “Look, neither of you two appear to be the person I was trying to contact, but I’ll take what I can get. You can’t leave me here. The room service is shockingly bad, for one thing, and-”

“Who _did_ you try to contact then?” Rose asked, ignoring his rambling complaints.

“Why should I tell you?” he parried, eyes glittering.

“Because we have the power to leave you here, locked forever in this cell,” Ianto deadpanned, and John winced.

“Touché. Okay. I’ll tell you. Did you come here with Javic?”

“Javic?”

“Yeah. Javic Piotr Thane. Tall guy, bit of a jawline. He’s not as good looking as me, but I wouldn’t say he’s _too_ bad,” John spoke, before his eyes suddenly fixated on a spot behind where Rose and Ianto were standing. “He’s also glaring at me from the doorway of this cell.”

Ianto and Rose whipped around and came face to face with none other than Captain Jack Harkness himself. He looked as furious as Ianto had ever seen him, including the last time he'd had to deal with John.

“Jayme?” Jack asked, frowning.

“I go by Captain John Hart these days, Javic,” John said, winking at Ianto.

“Wait a minute,” Ianto cut in, staring imploringly at Jack. “Javic Piotr Thane?”

“Wait a minute,” John mocked, looking now between the two men. “Boyfriend?”

Jack went from looking mildly panicked at Ianto’s words to suddenly hopeful at John’s. His disbelieving smile caught on his face. “Boyfriend?” he asked Ianto.

“That wasn’t what I- oh, _shut up_!” Ianto hissed, glaring at John. He gave Jack an indecipherable look.

“Still got good taste then, Jack?” John asked, and Ianto wouldn’t have been surprised to see the man licking his lips. “One partner’s not enough for you anymore? You’ve got the makings of a nice little team here.”

Being referred to by John seemed to break Rose out of her quiet stupor. “Is anybody going to explain to me what’s happening here?”

“Javic and I-” Hart began, but was cut off with a glare that came from Jack.

“That’s Captain Jack Harkness to you.”

“-Captain Jack Harkness and I go way back,” John continued, then frowned at Ianto. “You have a thing for Captains, or something, eye candy?”

“You wish…” Ianto responded. He saw Jack look between the two of them, brows furrowed, until his eyes opened comically wide.

“Your diary! The nicknames! You- you-” he stammered. “ _Eye candy!_ Only if you’re wearing a red military jacket!”

“It’s not what you think,” Ianto quickly replied. Jack didn’t look convinced, and Ianto was certain he saw a flash of jealousy pass through him. Huh. That would be a first.

“You’ve not explained anything,” Rose added in the awkward silence. “Can we just grab this guy and go?”

“That sounds like an _excellent_ plan,” John purred, turning all of his attention on Rose. “What did you say your name was again?”

“We didn’t,” Ianto cut in.

“This is Ianto Jones and Rose Tyler,” Jack said, deciding it wasn’t risky enough to need fake names for his friend. “Take a good look at them both, because once you’re done we’re leaving you here.”

“What?” Rose cried out. “All of this was for nothing?”

“Yep,” Jack said back to her, sounding all too happy about the situation.

“You can’t leave me here Jav- Jack,” John implored. “Come on, for old time’s sake! I’ll even throw a good evening into the bargain, if you want…”

“Absolutely not,” Jack snarked back. “I remember the promise I made. If you won’t tell me the truth about what happened, then I’m not going to entertain you for one more second.”

“The truth about what?” Ianto asked as he watched the two ex-time Agents glower at each other.

John ignored everybody but Jack, and Ianto watched as his face seemed to soften slightly. “And I’ve _told_ you- I’m doing this for your own good. You don’t want to know the truth.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit! You have no idea how it feels to be in my boots.”

Rose turned to Ianto. “Do you have any idea what they’re on about?” she whispered. Ianto shook his head.

“Even if I wanted to tell you, I was ordered to never say a word about it to you,” John continued.

Jack let out a loud bark of a laugh. “You? Following orders? You’re in _prison,_ for fuck's sake!” His face hardened as the noise of soft footsteps appeared from far away down the corridor. “Look. We need to go. If you won’t tell me the truth, then I’m leaving right now.”

John’s face looked physically pained. He swore under his breath, then seemed to resign himself. “Fine. Have it your way. But,” he said, suddenly serious. “You’re not going to like the truth one bit.”

Promises made to explain everything once they got out of the high security prison, the four of them scampered out of the cell. They passed cell 108, housing the mysterious woman from earlier, and John stuck his head into the open door.

“Thanks for your help,” he shouted. “I’m getting the hell outta here, Song!”

Ianto heard the unmistakable sound of a rather unchaste kiss, which lasted longer than he had thought it was humanly possible for a kiss to last (and he would know, considering the evenings he’d spent alone with Jack in his room with only a stopwatch for company.) He tried to get the noises John had made out of his head, but failed miserably. With quick steps, John soon caught up to them, his grin wide and completely maniacal.

“This is all quite exciting really, isn’t it?” John asked conversationally as they turned a corner. “A real life prison break. I’ve only done this once before, and it didn't end well for me. Ended up locked in a cell myself while the guy I was saving got off scott free!”

“What were you doing in jail in the first place?” Rose asked, still not at all ready to trust the man.

“I was at rehab,” John explained. “But then I murdered my therapist. Which apparently isn’t legal, even in murder rehab.”

Rose let out a choked noise, and Jack sent him a look. “You went to murder rehab?” 

“Are you sure ‘finding out the truth’ is worth letting this guy out of jail?” Ianto muttered so that only Jack could hear.

“Yes,” he replied quickly and, just as quietly as Ianto had spoken, added, “What _I_ want to know is how you know John.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking in that perverse brain of yours, it’s not what happened.”

“But something happened?” he said, arching an eyebrow.

“Not. What. You. Think.” Ianto hissed.

“Guards ahead! Behind the cabinets!” Rose shouted, and Ianto grabbed a lapel of Jack’s coat to pull both of them off to the side. The fact that he was then presented with a pouting Jack pressed between himself and the wall was an opportunity Ianto couldn’t let pass, so he quickly slammed their mouths together in a hot, open mouthed kiss. Jack let out a muffled noise of surprise, which Ianto responded to by nipping his bottom lip with his teeth in warning of the guards they were trying to hide from. For the next thirty seconds, Ianto used every trick he could remember that had previously been a success at shutting Jack up. He was only stopped when he felt a hand on his shoulder pull him away. He revelled in the glazed, unfocused look in Jack’s eyes and his pink, flushed lips.

“This is _not_ the time!” Rose scolded them, though the twinkle in her eye betrayed her real reaction.

“Does that prove my point?” Ianto asked Jack, smirking.

“Err…” Jack murmured, his brain apparently working just as sluggishly as his limbs, which had yet to move off the wall.

“You don’t have any reason to act jealous, okay?” he patiently explained. Jack’s eyes snapped up to match Ianto’s.

“I’m not _jealous!_ ”

Ianto rolled his eyes again, and turned back to the now empty corridor. John’s head popped out from his own hiding spot.

“Was I missing out on something?” he asked, looking between the two men with an obvious expression.

“ _Fortunately,_ yes,” Rose responded as Jack possessively grabbed Ianto’s hand and broke back into a run.

Ianto squeezed his palm tightly. _“I’m not jealous!”_ he sarcastically mocked.

“Shut up, _boyfriend!”_ Jack responded, with the same teasing tone. Ianto felt himself flush as he bit his cheek to try to hold back the grin which was threatening to break onto his stoic expression.

“Can we please just get out of here? I’m just about done with all three of you,” Rose said, sounding exasperated.

“Actually,” John interrupted, causing Rose to squeak in shock at his sudden appearance behind her. “There’s some bits and bobs of mine I need to get back first.”

“Bits and bobs?” Ianto asked, arching an eyebrow. They pushed through a doorway and found themselves back at the staircase they had entered the floor through.

“My vortex manipulator, the guns they didn’t destroy, the knives they didn’t destroy, any _other_ weapons they didn’t destroy…”

“We’re not going back just because you can’t leave without your favourite toys,” Ianto firmly decided.

“Besides, when we meet back up with our other friend, he’ll only confiscate them from you,” Rose added.

Hart pouted and looked to Jack. “Come on. I’m not telling you anything if I leave here without my toys.”

Jack growled like a frustrated tiger. “Fine. Where are they?”

“Bottom floor,” John grinned, clapping his hands together as he began to race down the stairs. “Let’s get to it!”

They raced down the staircase, jumping the last few steps of each section like school children competing to be crowned the bravest of them all. At some point along the way, Ianto had let go of Jack’s hand, which really was a terrible shame. Jack had big, warm hands, and he’d have to find some other excuses to keep holding onto them, because he really did find himself enjoying the way their fingers interlocked together, and the way Jack subconsciously rubbed his thumb over his skin. The Jack he knew from the future wasn’t too keen on hand holding, so Ianto supposed it was all the more reason to hold the younger Jack’s hand as often as possible.

Rose nudged him with her elbow as they turned a corner. “Stop staring at his arse,” she grinned, nodding to Jack in front of them.

Ianto turned red. “I’m _not_ staring at his arse,” he lied, moving his eyes away from the thing he was quite obviously staring at.

“So, are you going to tell me when you two became ‘official’, then?” Rose asked, being all too invested in her best friend’s love life.

“We aren’t!” Ianto responded hurriedly. “Earlier was a slip of the tongue.”

“Right,” Rose said, sounding entirely unconvinced. “As was the two of you snogging against the wall like teenagers?”

Ianto grinned deviously. “Well, I’d certainly say _that_ involved a ‘slip of the tongue’, in a roundabout way.”

Rose gasped. “Ianto Jones!” she exclaimed. “Jack is becoming a very bad influence on you!”

He laughed and picked up the pace, having reached the bottom floor finally. Ahead, he saw Jack pull out his gun and hold it in front of him, panting slightly after running. (Calm your thoughts, Ianto, don’t focus on the bead of sweat running down his neck…)

“Where do we go?” he asked John, pausing before they entered the floor.

“I don’t know. I’ve only been stuck here 732 days,” John unhelpfully answered. 

“I _thought_ you looked a few years older. You sure it’s only been 732 days?”

John punched Jack on his left shoulder, hard.

“We ran past a storage room earlier. It could be down that corridor,” Rose suggested, and Ianto nodded in agreement.

“Oh yeah, handcuff room, right? I remember,” Jack leered. “Wanted to make sure I visited it again before we left."

“For once, I’m actually thankful for your utterly depraved brain,” Ianto unwillingly admitted. “By all means, lead the way.”

They all turned to look at John, waiting for his agreement in the decision. He shrugged casually. “You mention handcuffs, and I’m in. I know quite intimately just how skilled the Captain is with-”

“- That’s enough, thank you,” Jack interrupted, silencing John with a glare. Rose turned to Ianto with her eyebrow raised, but Ianto just mouthed the word ‘later’ at her and picked up his heels, following the two other men out of the door and into the corridor behind.

Jack led the four of them through the maze of corridors, pulling them into spare rooms and behind tall objects whenever another person entered their field of vision. His gun was still cocked and loaded, and Ianto was certain Jack wouldn’t hesitate to use it if he had to. After around ten minutes of sneaking around, just as Ianto was thinking that they must be getting close, they rounded a corner and came face to face with two uniformed guards.

For a split second, both parties stopped and stared at each other. Ianto noticed a finger tighten against the glowing gun that the guard on the right was pointing at Jack, and immediately lunged forwards to knock it upwards. A blue pulse shot into the ceiling. The rest of them broke into action. Ianto tussled with one of the guards, keeping him distracted as Rose came up behind him and thwacked him round the head with the baton she had kept ahold of. Ianto sent her a grateful grin as the guard pitched forwards, falling unconsciously to the ground.

They turned to their friends just in time to see Jack smash the female guard around the head with his gun. They stood still, panting for breath.

“Well,” Ianto started. “That was a close one.”

“You can say that again,” Rose laughed, leaning on Ianto. He gave her a quick glance over to check she wasn’t injured, but was glad to see she just looked tired from exertion. He turned his attention back to the others, and was immediately suspicious of the gleam in Jack’s expression.

“What?” He asked. “You only use that face when you _think_ you’ve had a great idea.”

“Oh, but I _have,_ ” he grinned wolfishly. “It involves getting you two out of your clothes and into uniform.”

John’s ears pricked up from beside him. “Oh, bravo Jack! That’s more like the man I remember.” He slapped Jack on the back playfully.

“Absolutely not,” Ianto firmly replied.

Rose touched his arm gently. “He does have a point, though. It would be a lot less dangerous to move around this floor if we looked like guards escorting two prisoners to their cells.”

“But why does it have to be _me_ dressing up?” he whined.

“It’s obvious why John can’t,” Jack pointed out. “And as for myself- well, I find it _far_ too errotic to be dressed up in a uniform and would give the charade away immediately.”

Ianto allowed his mind to wander to the night he and Jack had received a certain UNIT parcel from Martha, and realised that he may have a point. Although, if Jack’s reaction to when _he_ wore that red cap was anything to go by, they may be in just as bad a situation as Jack in a uniform would provide.

“But I like this suit,” he pouted, even though he was already starting to undo the buttons on his waistcoat.

“And I like you better out of it,” Jack murmured, moving closer to ‘help’ Ianto (which mainly consisted of him attempting to touch every inch of his body as he pulled the suit jacket off him.)

John shot Rose a disbelieving look. “Are they always this bad?”

Rose shrugged the black guard overalls over her jeans and t-shirt, giving John an amused look. “Trust me. This is nothing compared to usual.”

“And I thought _I_ was bad.”

By the time Rose and Ianto had successfully donned their disguises (thankfully with at least one layer of their original outfits still on underneath) they were ready to set off again. Rose looked a lot more wary than Ianto when she picked up her blue gun.

“It’s all a bit Star Wars: Movie Four, this is. Dressing as guards to rescue the princess,” Rose said, jerking a thumb at Hart.

“If you’re calling me Princess Leia, then I’ll take that as a compliment. I look _great_ in a sparkling gold bikini,” Hart said, enjoying the disgusted looks on the other’s faces.

“I’m Han Solo,” Ianto quickly decided, as Rose raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re just saying that because you have a crush on Harrison Ford.”

“I do not!” he spluttered, trying to look appalled

“Wouldn’t blame you,” Jack added. “It’s the sexy American accent, the handsome face, and the fact he’s a fearless hero, isn’t it?”

Ianto suddenly came to the realisation that his attraction to Jack and his mild obsession with Harrison Ford may not be entirely unrelated matters. “Which young boy _didn’t_ want to grow up to be Indiana Jones or Han Solo?”

“Well, some more than others, I imagine,” Rose muttered. “I guess that leaves me as Luke?”

“Hang on, hang on,” Jack interrupted. “Who am I in all of this, then?”

Ianto looked at Rose and grinned. “Chewbacca, of course.”

Even John laughed loudly at the pout on Jack’s face.

“Come on,” the American grumbled moodily. “Let’s find your weapons and get the hell out of here.”

With Rose and Ianto leading the way, the four of them managed to make it through the next few corridors that led to the storage rooms without any further trouble. They came across one guard, who looked between them and their ‘prisoners’, and then promptly nodded his head in acceptance, allowing them to continue on their journey. Ianto allowed himself to relax a little as they passed by. He had felt certain the guard would be able to take one look at his face and see the nerves shining through as if he had the words ‘FAKE GUARD’ tattooed on his forehead.

“Nice acting,” Jack sniggered, and Ianto retaliated by butting the top of his gun harshly into the small of his back.

They finally reached the long corridor they had been in earlier, spying the room they had stepped into on the far right of the passage. Ianto paused, and wondered how they were going to search every room here.

“Oh, you know what,” John started to speak, looking around the area in thought. “I _do_ remember coming here on my first day, now you mention it.”

He took a step forward and pointed to the second door on the left. “That’s the one. My stuff should be inside.”

“I’m glad your memory decided to return at last,” Ianto muttered, but dutifully followed Hart into the room. Inside there was dim lighting, as opposed to the bright white lights that had lit up the corridors outside. The room smelt of dust, leather and the same smell that came out of Jack’s Webley revolver after he had shot it. Ianto hurried to catch up with Hart, not wanting to allow him to leave his sight in a room full of weapons and technology.

The room itself was filled with metal cabinets, reaching high to the ceiling and barely having space in between them for someone to walk through to open. It was almost as if the items stored in the metal drawers were never intended to be brought back out once they were put in; the criminals who had given them over to the guards were never going to be allowed back out of Stormcage with their lives. Thankfully, knowing how long ago Hart had been brought into the prison allowed them to narrow down the whereabouts of his few items, as the system they used was based on dates. Ianto could feel his inner archivist mind surfacing once more, as if begging him to inspect and catalogue the structure of the storage facility in front of him.

“Got it!” Jack shouted suddenly, pulling out a metal drawer that he had recognised based on the name on the front label. John jumped over to his side, eagerly sticking his nose into the drawer to see what was there. He snatched his Vortex Manipulator out, pressing it carefully back against his wrist as he cooed and fussed over the item as if greeting an old lover.

“You two want some alone time?” Rose asked, trying not to laugh at the glare John sent her way.

“Can we trust you to keep hold of that?” Jack asked seriously, an arm on John’s shoulder. “You’re not gonna jump ship as soon as we take our eyes off you?”

“Of course not,” John scoffed. “The temporal field barriers across this prison mean the teleport circuits inside this bad boy no longer works. I can’t leave, no matter how much I want to.”

“Right,” Jack nodded, choosing to believe him for now.

John had moved on from his wrist strap, rummaging through the drawer once again. This time he came out with a long silver gun, crying out in glee as he raised the revolver triumphantly towards the ceiling.

Before he had time to react, however, Ianto had grabbed the item off him. “You’re allowed two weapons, but I’m keeping hold of them until we drop you off.”

John scowled at him, trying to look threatening. Ianto matched his stare, refusing to be intimidated. “Fine. I guess I just won’t tell Jack the truth.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “I don’t care _what_ it is you hold over Jack, but I’m not interested. Give me two weapons, or we’re leaving right now with none. Your choice.”

Reluctantly, John reached back into his drawer and pulled one final gun out, a smaller yet more futuristic looking piece of technology. He slammed it harshly into Ianto’s outstretched hand, trying to catch the sharp edge on his palm in payback. Ianto didn’t give any indication as to whether he had succeeded in hurting him, and instead tucked the two guns into his overall trousers, alongside his own Torchwood Three issued gun.

“That wasn’t very hard, was it?” Rose asked patronisingly, enjoying watching John glower to himself. They made their way back towards the door.

“You, giving orders while dressed in uniform?” Jack muttered quietly into Ianto’s ear as they moved. “I don’t know whether to be intimidated or turned on.”

“Why not both?” Ianto asked coyly, as he tapped Jack warningly on the shoulder with his stolen weapon.

Their flirting was interrupted by a sudden loud wailing, which started to blare even louder than the siren which had been ringing ever since they arrived. Rose froze at the front of the group.

“I think,” John said slowly. “The guards have finally realised I’ve escaped my cell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay for all of you who were curious about whether or not it was River or Hart, go back and look at the chapter title for this episode... (Yes I'm very proud of the titles of these first 7 chapters so plz appreciate them) (yes they are all shitty puns)
> 
> We edited this, we did - we fixed the little errors. But any paragraph longer than two sentences, we immediately skipped, so don't yell at us please :) also Lauren has been helping me cut out about 500 words in each chapter of this episode. I loathe it.
> 
> As ever, we really appreciate any kudos and comments you give! Find us on Tumblr @garknessandbones @thirteeninafez


	3. How Not to Rescue a Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Ianto gets up close and personal with a shaft

“I’ll ask you one more time,” a gruff voice spoke quietly, spittle from the man’s mouth landing on the Doctor’s face as he leant over him. The Doctor grimaced, scrunching his nose in disgust as he got a whole lot closer to the guard’s rancid breath than he would’ve liked. “Who are you, and how did you get into this prison?”

“I’ve told you,” the Doctor spoke calmly, hoping the way his hands were squirming behind the back of the chair he was tied to wasn’t visible to the many guards standing around him. His left hand was nearly free, and if he kept pushing he was sure he could get it out of the rope and into his pocket, where his trusty screwdriver was. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

With a growl, the guard pulled away from the Doctor and walked carefully to a table by the side. He reached out and grabbed hold of something large and metallic. The Doctor gulped as he turned around, brandishing it dangerously to him with a glint in his eye.

“I wonder how long it’s going to take you to change your mind…”

The Doctor looked wide eyed at the advancing guard, and then something caught his eye over the man’s shoulder. He fixated on the glass window inside the door, seeing a flash of blonde pass by. For a split second he locked eyes with a pair of pale brown eyes, before the person continued running past. A few seconds later and the face returned, this time close enough that her nose was pressed harshly against the glass of the door. He saw the round face, then the perfect smile, which seemed both elated to see him and yet anxious as they took in the scene inside the room.

He allowed himself to smile back at the figure, even as the guard advanced with his torturous tool brandished in front of him. It didn’t matter what they were going to do to him, because Rose was here and Rose would save him...

Outside in the corridor, Ianto suddenly realised that one of the four pairs of loud footfalls had stopped. He held out an arm, catching Jack from continuing in his fast-paced run down the hallway, instead turning around to look behind. Rose had her face pressed into the glass of a door barely six feet away. He moved to join her.

“What is it?” he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I can’t see too well,” she admitted, squinting at the door. “It’s dark in there, but it’s him. I know it’s him.”

“Who?” John asked, a frown upon his face.

“The Doctor. He’s inside?” Jack questioned, his face breaking out into a grin.

“Yes. But there’s guards, at least ten of them,” Rose continued. “And they’re doing something to him. I can’t see anymore, one guard just stepped in front of him.”

She turned back to the others, looking worried. Ianto soothed her with the hand still on her shoulder, rubbing small circles with his thumb.

“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s get in there and save him!” Jack blurted out. Ianto shook his head softly and then stepped forwards to take a look into the room himself. Rose hadn’t been lying when she said the room was dark. There wasn’t much light, though he could see well enough to make out the general size of the room. It was large and long, with enough nooks and crannies around the edges to provide ample cover to hide, if you already happened to be in the room.

The trouble was, they _weren't_ already in the room. They could run in guns blazing, but despite having the element of surprise, there was no way the four of them would be able to beat all the guards.

“We can’t. We’d be shot down before we made it into the room,” he told Jack realistically, moving back so the other man could get a look as well.

“We can’t do nothing!” Rose insisted loudly, causing Ianto to put his finger to his lips.

“Quiet. Don’t let them hear us,” he told her.

“Every room in this facility is soundproof,” John pointed out. “So there’s no point trying to listen in to their plans, either. No sound in, no sound out.” He emphasised his point by knocking loudly on the door, causing the others to cringe backwards. When nothing immediately happened, they figured John was telling the truth.

“Well, Ianto and I could go through in our disguises,” Rose suggested. Jack shook his head vehemently.

“No. That’s too dangerous, and - no offence - but I doubt either of your acting skills are good enough to convince a dozen guards,” Jack pointed out. “Besides, what are you planning on doing once you’re in? Taking all of them on?”

“Then what can we do?” Ianto asked, exasperated. “Wait until they get bored?”

Rose shook her head. “No. We can’t just leave him in there. I don’t want to know what they’re gonna do to him.”

A sudden cough brought the three of them out of their discussions as they all turned to look at John. He was pointing his hand at something at the top of the wall, eyebrow raised. Ianto followed the point of his arm, and looked at the metal grate he was indicating. 

“The vents?” he asked.

“Come on, it’s a movie classic!” John grinned. “Plus, I can see that the vent runs across the ceiling of that room. We’d get in with the element of surprise on our side, and be able to take out the lot of them.”

Jack seemed to consider his point. “That does sound like a surprisingly good idea,” he caved, looking to the others.

Ianto eyed Hart’s suspiciously innocent face. “I suppose it is the best idea we’ve got right now.”

John clapped once in glee, rubbing his hands together. “Excellent! So, blondie. Let me help you in.”

He offered a hand to Rose, who frowned at it. Ianto, suddenly cottoning onto the _real_ reason behind Hart’s idea, rolled his eyes. “Rose is not going in front of you, pervert,” he decided, looking sharply at Hart.

“Oi!” Rose exclaimed, her eyes going wide as she pointed a finger at John. “You are _not_ crawling behind me inside that vent.”

“The lady will go at the back of the line, and you’ll go at the front,” Jack insisted. Both John and Rose turned their faces towards him, with a matching annoyed expression.

“So I don’t get to stare at _anyone’s_ arse?” John asked, at the same time that Rose said: “Now you’re just being _sexist!_ ”

Jack held his hands up in surrender. “Woah, woah! No need to shout!”

“I agree with Jack,” Ianto added. “John should go at the front, then me, Jack and Rose in that order.”

“You’d rather stare at my arse than his?” John said, shocked as he pointed to Jack. “I’m flattered, eye candy.”

Jack let out a quiet noise which sounded close to a growl. “I’ve changed my mind. Ianto should go at the back.”

The Welshman scoffed. “Protecting _my_ virtue, now?”

“But then nobody would be staring at eye candy, which is just a _crime,_ ” John whined.

“Exactly,” Jack nodded, and then seemed to come to a realisation. “Oh. Actually, let’s go back to your idea, Ianto. I preferred you being in front of me.”

Ianto went slightly red. He could see the cogs whirring in Jack’s brain as he tried to weigh up the pros and cons of each situation. It was as if his jealousy was fighting against his libido, and Ianto couldn’t tell which was winning.

“You’re all being _pigs_ about it,” Rose muttered, pushing them towards the door. “Just do what Ianto said and get on with it.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Jack agreed, putting up a hand to his forehead in a mock salute at her orders. She rolled her eyes, but stepped up to help Hart reach up and take the metal grating off.

“You sure you won’t get too jealous?” Ianto teased Jack as they watched the other two work on the vent.

Jack grinned at him. “Would you have to make out with me against a wall again if I said yes?”

“Maybe later, if you behave yourself,” Ianto promised, sending Jack a wink as Rose called his name. He walked over to see that Rose and John had successfully pulled the cover down from the entrance to the vents, and John was already squirming his way through the hole. Rose pushed his foot upwards and Ianto jogged over to give her a hand, both of them succeeding in pushing John fully into the vent.

“I’m getting out of this uniform before we go in,” Rose decided, already pulling the jumpsuit off. “It’s too hot in both layers as it is, let alone in a cramped vent.”

Ianto agreed, reaching to gratefully undo his own disguise. He pulled the black material off, pushing it over to the side, and then brushed his shirt down to try to even out the material. He was dressed in his suit trousers, but had abandoned the waistcoat and jacket earlier on. The silk tie was still knotted at his throat, as he had refused to leave his second favourite blue tie abandoned in a prison corridor, and his silver cufflinks had stayed for similar reasons too. Regarding them, he pulled the metal out of his cuffs and put them in his pocket. Without cufflinks, he rolled his sleeves up high until his forearms were bare. He didn’t fail to notice the way Jack’s eyes fixated on the extra skin, knowing that at Torchwood the older Jack had pretty much had a Pavlovian response to his current state of ‘undress’.

As Ianto prepared to pull himself up, Jack broke out of his stare and dropped to one knee to help Ianto up. He put one arm on the vent and another on Jack’s shoulder, stepping into his palms as Jack then moved upward, propelling him forwards. He scrambled for purchase on the shiny metal floor, succeeding in pulling himself into the shaft whilst ignoring the arm John was offering. As soon as they had moved forwards, he felt the floor shake slightly as Jack pulled himself up, making the entire job look easy. Ianto rolled his eyes at the flashy grin he gave him, before Jack was turning around and helping to pull Rose up. 

“Do you know the way?” Jack spoke loudly, aiming the question towards Hart.

“I’m guessing the first hatch down,” he said back.

“You’re _guessing?”_

John laughed, starting to scurry forwards across the metal as he ignored Jack. Ianto moved to catch up with him, trying not to think about all of the dust and debris that would be on the bottom of the vent. His one saving grace was that he was no longer wearing the stuffy guard’s uniform, though by the feel of his knees he was regretting the damage he was doing to the material of his trousers. He supposed the bottom of the trouser leg would already be pretty ruined, after his injury earlier on in their escape, and then he suddenly realised that his leg _had_ been injured, but was feeling completely fine now. And _oh God,_ don’t let Jack see the scorch marks and remember he had been hurt, because he wasn’t even ready to _think_ about what it meant that his leg felt no pain, let alone confront Jack about it.

He was brought out of his thoughts when he felt a sharp pain on his backside, which caused him to let out an undignified squeal. “Did you just pinch me?” he accused, whipping his head around to stare at Jack.

The man grinned cheekily back at him. “Yup. I was trying to get your attention.”

“There are better ways of doing that,” he muttered, reaching back to swat Jack’s hand away as it creeped forwards again. He glared daggers at the other man. “Why did you want my attention?”

Jack nodded ahead of them, and Ianto turned his head around to look ahead of him. John was somehow very far in the distance ahead of him. “You stopped moving,” Jack explained.

Ianto, in his mild embarrassment, decided not to turn around to glare at Jack again, and instead picked up the pace. He shuffled quickly along the vent, kicking his leg back as he felt Jack playfully reach out a final time, and managed to catch up towards John. 

“Distracted by something there, eye candy?” John asked teasingly, wiggling his hips. Ianto rolled his eyes.

“Would you mind using my real name? It’s Ianto,” he argued back.

“Oh, but I always give the pretty ones nicknames,” John purred.

“Would you stop flirting with my - with Ianto?” Jack protested, catching his tongue halfway through his sentence.

John let out a laugh. “But that’s half the fun, sweetheart.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Rose interrupted. “Why don’t we continue through this vent _without_ biting each other's heads off?”

“I like that plan,” Ianto agreed, and gave John a firm shove forward. They continued to move, until after another minute John came to a stop.

“First vent.”

“And you’re sure this is the correct place?” Jack questioned.

“Nope,” John unhelpfully laughed. “But there’s only one way to find out, right?”

And with that, he dropped down to the floor below, leaving the three others to scrabble to follow. After he didn’t reappear, Ianto decided that it would be best to follow him down, and lowered himself through the gap. As his feet hit the floor, he took one step forwards and looked up. He stopped straight, freezing in his movement except to put his hands up.

Ten blue guns were pointing straight at him.

Ianto caught eyes with John who was sending him a sheepish grin. From above, they heard a distinct yet muffled noise. Half of the guards pointed their guns upwards as they realised that the two fugitives who had dropped to the floor weren’t alone.

_“Come on, you next!”_

_“I’m going! Follow right after me!”_

And then Jack was dropping through the hole in the ventilation, quickly followed by Rose. It took them two seconds to look around the room and realise their predicament, and another two seconds for them to join in the position of surrender that Ianto and John were holding. The silence in the room was suddenly broken by a familiar voice coming from a chair in the center of the room.

“First rule of a surprise rescue: if you’re taking the vents, _don’t_ talk loud enough for the room below to hear you,” the Doctor calmly spoke, turning his head around to take in his ‘rescue’ team. Something in his eye glittered, and Ianto immediately knew that all hell was about to break loose. “Second rule of a surprise rescue: distract the guards long enough to take their eyes off the person you’re rescuing.”

The dozen guards in the room suddenly twirled around to look at the Doctor, who grinned and then triumphantly held his hand up towards the ceiling. In his grasp was his sonic screwdriver, only recognisable by the blue light that shone out the top as he pressed it. All at once the guards' weapons suddenly sparked, causing them to drop the guns and lose concentration on the five fugitives in the room.

“Run!” the Doctor shouted at his friends. Ianto suddenly shook himself into action, dropping his arms as he used the momentary confusion to race towards the door. One guard noticed their movements and tried to step in front of them, but he quickly raised his left fist and planted a hard punch on his jaw. The man reeled back and the coast was clear again.

All of a sudden they were out of the room, the five of them tearing down the corridor as (impossibly) even more alarms started blaring out into the hallway. Ianto closely followed the Doctor, who seemed to have a destination in mind. Despite running at what he thought was his full speed, he felt the presence of someone else running up beside him and overtaking him. He looked to see Rose pass him by, and she moved up towards where the Doctor was leading them. The Time Lord quickly moved his head to look at her as she called his name, and Ianto couldn’t help but smile at the look the Doctor gave Rose. It was far too adorably sweet for the danger they were currently in, but he found he couldn’t blame them as Rose grabbed hold of the Doctor's hand.

“Well, they’re cute, aren’t they?” John asked Ianto sarcastically. “Why can’t I get any of that?”

“For one thing, Rose and the Doctor actually _like_ each other,” Ianto replied. John let out a loud guffaw.

“I wasn’t wrong about you being feisty!” he laughed. “I’m beginning to see why Jack likes having you around.”

As Ianto decided not to dignify Hart with a response, he saw the man reach into his pocket and pull some sort of spherical object out. He tossed it like a tennis ball in his hands a couple of times, before he winked at Ianto and threw it behind him.

“What was that?” Ianto demanded, turning back to look at the object, which was now rolling across the floor as it flashed red.

“I’d run if I were you,” John said, and (much to the chagrin of Ianto) grabbed his hand to pull him quicker along the corridor. Before he could complain or yank his hand out of the grip, they turned a corner and Ianto realised they had escaped just in time. A sudden cacophony of noise rang out as a blast of heat reached his back, casting shadows across the hallway in front of them.

From just in front of them, Jack turned his head. “What the hell was that?” He asked, and then did a double take as he saw his ex and current not-a-boyfriend-but-someone-he-often-made-out-with holding hands as they ran away from an explosion.

“Where the hell did you get that from?” Ianto shouted, finally succeeding in wrenching his hand away. 

John gave him a cocky grin. “Sleight of hand in the storage room,” he winked, dangling Ianto’s pocket watch in front of his face. “Nice watch. What else do you have in your pants?”

“Give me that!” Ianto hissed, swiping at the watch as he reclaimed it. By that point, they were turning a familiar corner, and if he wasn’t much mistaken in front of them they would see…

The Tardis stood proudly at the far end of the corridor, hidden by it’s perception filter to all the guards who might have passed it earlier in the day. Ianto breathed a sigh of relief as he finally stopped running, letting his speed diminish as he reached to put a hand on the box. To his surprise, the Doctor hadn’t yet opened the door and let them in. He frowned as the Time Lord turned to face John.

“Who are you?”

“Me? Captain John Hart, apparently, pleased to meet you, darling,” he smirked, reaching a hand out for the Doctor to take. Ianto suppressed a grin as the Time Lord completely ignored him.

“Why did you send my Tardis a message?” he asked, his eyes cold and untrusting.

“I didn’t mean to send it to your ship. I sent it through a Vortex Manipulator, which was meant to get to Jack,” he explained, quickly dropping his charms as he realised that the man in front of him was not someone who could be so easily swayed. “Sorry, who did you say you were?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he turned to look at Jack. “Please don’t tell me he’s one of yours?”

Jack grimaced. “Yeah, sorry. He was my old partner, back when I was a Time Agent.”

The Doctor tutted at that admission. “ _Another_ Time Agent.”

“I’m sorry, who are you to judge me?” John said angrily, taking a step towards the Doctor.

“I’m a man who’s been alive for over 900 years. I’ve seen things you couldn’t possibly even dream about, and understand Time in a way that your miniscule brain couldn’t fathom. I have a ship powered by the same Vortex that I stared into and came out alive from, which you pretend to understand when you hop through time with your childish little wristwatch. I am the last Time Lord, and I have _every_ right to judge _you_.”

John had shrunk away at his speech, almost quivering in petrified awe. Ianto had never seen him speechless, and found himself staring at the Doctor with some sort of reverence. Before anyone had any time to react, the noise of footsteps echoed down the corridor, coming closer every second that passed. Their postures froze, and the Doctor turned once more towards them.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t leave you in this corridor for the guards to find you.”

Before John could speak, Jack butted in. “Doctor, please. I’m missing two years of my life and he’s the only one who can help me find them.”

They all regarded Jack. His face looked open and pained, and everything clicked inside of Ianto’s mind. Of course that’s what the two ex-Time Agents had been talking about earlier. He couldn’t begrudge Jack for wanting to find his lost memories. The Doctor seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because with a tip of his head he was opening the Tardis doors.

The Doctor chivvied the four humans into the ship, following closely behind as he caught first sight of a guard. Ianto watched him slam the door shut, racing towards the Tardis console to press buttons and pull levers. He moved his view from the Time Lord to the ex-Time Agent, amusing himself at the look of utter disbelief on his face. Picturing Hart entering the Tardis wasn’t exactly something that Ianto had considered before, but the reality of the situation was far too entertaining for him not to poke a bit of fun at.

“You’re gonna want to hold onto something for this bit.” He told him, grabbing hold of the handrail along the side of the staircase that led up to the console. Hart took a look back at him, and then the Tardis jolted into action, throwing John to the floor. Ianto sniggered, and in response was rewarded with a petulant glare coming from the man currently lying on the floor.

The ship continued to groan around them for another few seconds, before with a shudder it came to a stop. The Doctor flipped one last switch - which Ianto was certain was for dramatic effect rather than any useful purpose - and put his hands in his pockets, turning his glare onto Hart. 

“Right. _You_ have some explaining to do,” he said to John. None of the more seasoned travellers offered any help to the man as he pulled himself up off the floor.

John, now stood up, brushed his red jacket down and jutted his chin upwards at the Doctor. “I made a promise to Jack in exchange for escaping prison. I don’t see what explaining I need to do to _you._ ”

Rose changed tactics. “Jack. Who is he, _really_?”

Jack met her eyes. “He’s someone from my past. You already know I was a Time Agent before I met you, and John was the same. We were partners.”

“See, I was there first, eye candy,” John muttered to Ianto, who rolled his eyes.

“I hardly think two weeks counts for much,” he replied, enjoying how John’s expression froze in a ‘how did you know that?’ look. Jack caught his eye, raising a silent eyebrow that Ianto waved off. He had already broken the ice with Jack about him originating from Jack’s own future, after all.

“You know him too?” the Doctor asked, his eyes falling on Ianto too.

“We’ve met,” Ianto said, unwilling to go into too much detail. “I know him well enough to know not to trust anything that comes out of his mouth.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at that. “And you convinced me to let him into the Tardis?”

“The Time Agency took two years worth of memories from me. I spent years chasing them down after I left the job, and couldn’t find anything. John knows what happened, and he promised he’d tell me the truth once we got him out,” Jack explained.

There was a pregnant pause in the room as they registered his words. Ianto was once again reminded of just how little he really knew about Jack’s past. He’d come leaps and bounds with the younger, less emotionally guarded version of Jack, but Ianto still knew that the man wasn’t proud of his past. Hell, he still had no real idea what a Time Agent was, or how long Jack had spent with the agency.

“Well, in that case,” the Doctor spoke slowly, breaking the silence. “Get talking.”

John’s face shifted to look at everybody in the room, finishing on Jack’s own face. “I can’t just tell you. I don’t think you’d want everybody here,” he flickered his eyes back to stare at Ianto in particular, and then returned to Jack. “To hear.”

“Then show me,” Jack said, fire blazing in his eyes.

John shrugged. “Suits me. You’ve got a ship, so let me take you there.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” the Doctor cut in. “You’re not doing anything with the Tardis. No way.”

Jack looked back at him. “Doctor, you have to trust him.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jack,” Ianto quietly suggested. Jack turned to glare at him, and Ianto tried to not let the look hurt him. As much as it pained him to see Jack so desperate for his own memories, the idea of letting John Hart control the destination of the Tardis wasn’t something he could allow. He imagined him piloting the ship straight into a carefully constructed trap - into a Time Lock that kept them stuck while Hart tried to sell the ship off to the highest bidder, perhaps.

“You know that there’s another option, Jack?” John said carefully. Jack regarded him, having a silent conversation with the other man that nobody else in the room could interpret. Ianto tried to not let the flash of jealousy he felt show.

“What other option?” Rose asked, confusion etched onto her expression. Ianto could feel the tendrils of unease beginning to grip his emotions, and he didn’t like the look on Jack’s face. It was a look synonymous with the expression he wore when he had to make a difficult decision. He’d seen it on his face when he looked down at a man, mangled by the rift that had taken them and returned them a changed creature. He’d seen it on Jack's face when he took his pistol and aimed it towards a woman that Ianto had loved with his entire being. Ianto saw the glimpse of that look reflected in Jack's expression now, and he gulped down the anxiety that brought him.

“You could just tell him,” Ianto pointed out, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking too badly. Jack turned with a nervous, pained glance.

“Ianto, my past isn’t something I want you to hear all about. I wasn’t a good man back then.”

Ianto almost reached out a hand towards Jack, forgetting for a moment that they were in the presence of three other beings. He took a step closer and spoke quietly, hoping only Jack would be able to make out his words. “You once told me that it felt like I know you in a way other people don’t. You said it was as if I already knew what kind of a person you are, but had accepted you already. That _hasn’t_ changed.”

He stared into Jack’s eyes, praying that his words would win the battle against the sheer strength of Jack’s fear.

“Well, as touching as all of this is,” John suddenly cut in, smashing the moment and any of Ianto’s hopes to pieces. “Jack. This is the only chance I’m ever gonna give you.”

Jack nodded slowly, but kept eye contact with Ianto. “I know.”

“And you also know that a ship that runs off the Vortex doesn’t exactly have a return address?” John asked.

His eyes closed as he took a deep breath. “I know.”

“What’s he talking about, Jack?” the Doctor demanded, but both ex-Time Agents ignored him.

“Fine. One second,” John said, reaching for something on his wrist and grabbing Jack’s shoulder with his other hand.

In the one second that passed, several thoughts flew through Ianto’s head. As he stared at Jack, he suddenly understood what the broken fear in his eyes really meant. John was going for his Vortex Manipulator, which _couldn’t_ return back to the Tardis. Once he teleported them out of there, that was it. Jack would be gone. He was doing the same thing that every version of Jack he knew ever did - chasing after his past for answers with no regard to what he would be leaving behind in the present. It had happened before after he’d spent three entire days dead, and again after the Doctor had shown up in London to deal with the ATMOS incident.

The only difference was, this time Ianto wasn’t going to sit back and watch it happen.

As John moved his hand in almost slow motion towards the button in the bottom right of his Vortex Manipulator, Ianto thrust out his own hand, grabbing onto Jack’s wrist at the exact same moment that John hit said button.

Then, Time was swirling all around him as his senses were overwhelmed, and everything faded to black…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I must've said about 50 times during these past few chapters that these scenes would look SO good filmed. I don't know if they've come across as well as I imagine them in my head, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless!  
> Lauren has been very annoying today. She mocked my writing because apparently John wasn't raising Rose's eyebrow, and then texted my sister to come into my room and raise MY eyebrow. The audacity. (No I definitely didn't threaten to do the same to her.)
> 
> Anyway!! Think there might have been a little mishap with the date I posted last chapter - seems AO3 is reverting to automatically putting the day our chapters upload as the day we posted chapter 1. I hope we remember to change it in the future, but that might be what happened if you didn't get notified of last update!! 
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos! Next chapter is certainly going to take y'all on a journey, so I'll see you next Sunday!


	4. Time Trek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: There's a break-up. Also, John is a simp.

Ianto blinked back into existence, then almost immediately blinked back out of existence as his spinning head threatened to knock him out. His arm reached blindly for something to hold onto, glad to find a cold cobbled wall which he promptly fell against. Once he got his breathing back in order he opened his eyes. He was standing in a dark street, the night sky above black and cloudy. The only sources of light outside were the yellow light coming from a large glass window across the street and a peculiar pink glowing fire, which appeared to be hanging in midair. He frowned, trying to make sense of the surroundings, but ultimately decided that he was either going mad or on some sort of alien planet.

“Oh, fuck,” a low voice complained, and Ianto looked over. John was frowning as he rubbed his temples with his hand. From beside him, Jack didn’t appear to be in a much better state, though the pinkness of his face could be down to the light emanating from the fire.

“You sure your Vortex Manipulator’s in working order?” Jack growled, pushing off the wall to take a look at their surroundings.

“My Vortex Manipulator is fine, I’ll have you know,” John replied argumentatively, then proceeded to glare at Ianto. “But if I program it for two travellers, adding a third person doesn’t exactly give you first class service.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of person to complain about adding a third person to the mix,” Ianto shot back, meeting his glare.

“Usually I don’t, darling, but I do prefer to not feel quite so nauseated before getting down to business,” he half leered, half scowled at Ianto.

“Well, there’s not much we can do about it now,” Jack pointed out blankly, surprisingly taking the voice of reason in the group. Ianto caught Jack's eyes and saw a flicker of anger beneath his cold facade, targeted not at John, but at Ianto. “Unless there’s a way of taking Ianto back, John?”

Ianto let his mouth hang open in vague annoyance. “Taking me back?”

John ignored him. “I warned you before we left, Jack. There’s no turning back now.”

Jack glared at Ianto as if it was his fault that the Tardis had no return address. “Great,” he replied flatly.

“I’m sorry that my presence is such a burden to you,” Ianto said scornfully. “I promise next time you try to leave me for good, I’ll let you go without a fight.”

Jack rolled his eyes at him. “I wasn’t running away from _you_.”

“Looked like it to me.”

Jack let out a sigh. “Look, my past is something I don’t talk about for a reason. I don’t want to get you caught up in all of this.”

“As much as I’m enjoying listening to your domestic, I think we may be a bit too late to keep Eye Candy out of this,” John piped up, pointing his fingers at two figures who appeared to have materialised out of thin air. They seemed to be squabbling over something, and Ianto instinctively took a step closer to the wall to hide himself.

“They’re gonna see us!” Ianto whispered to Hart.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. My Vortex Manipulator is holding us in a perception filter,” he quickly explained. “So long as you stay within six feet of me, you can dance and sing as loud as you want. Nobody will notice you.”

“Don’t test me...” Jack muttered, before he turned around to watch the two figures carefully.

Ianto glanced at Jack, noticing the way he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and tapped his left leg up and down on the floor. He knew those both to be signs of Jack choosing to close off, feeling uncomfortable with how much he was sharing about himself. He’d seen them whenever the rift threw something at Torchwood Three that Jack could recognise, but refused to explain for some private reason.

Ianto understood, of course, but he couldn’t help but feel frustrated. He thought that  _ this  _ Jack, at least, was a bit more open to sharing than the Jack he left behind in 2007 was. A part of his brain snagged on the possibility that he was being a bit harsh, as he didn’t exactly know what it was like to lose two years worth of memories, but that thought was snuffed out when the pink fire light illuminated the two faces standing at the other side of the street.

Ianto immediately recognised the younger versions of the two men he was standing next to.

It was Jack and John.

Whilst their faces were similar, there was a difference in the way they held themselves that only age could attest for.

“Okay, Jack, you wanted to know the truth,” John said. “Follow me.”

When Jack looked back at John, waiting for him to move, John suddenly groaned. “Ah. Right. I meant younger me.”

“This is gonna get confusing,” Ianto muttered quietly.

“You can call younger us Javic and Jayme,” John suggested.

Ianto looked up at Jack, remembering the name from earlier. “Javic?”

“It’s my old name. The name I was born with,” he replied.

“Oh,” Ianto responded. He felt like he was unlocking a part of Jack that he hadn’t seen before.

“Older me never said..?” Jack tentatively asked, looking up to finally meet Ianto’s eyes.

Ianto scoffed quietly. “Older you would  _ never  _ have told me his real name,” Ianto replied. As he saw the look of hurt and confusion on top of Jack’s face, he decided to backtrack a little. “So. Thank you.”

Ianto offered Jack a soft smile and was happy to see it returned to him. Their attention was drawn away by loud voices that rang out across the street.

“You guys really had got the ‘secret agent’ act down,” Ianto sarcastically pointed out as the voices carried far into the night sky.

“Base signals tell us she’s within a twenty metre radius of here,” Jayme’s voice spoke, and Ianto watched as he fiddled with something on his Vortex Manipulator. “To be more specific, coming from over there.”

He waved a hand at the lit glass window, drawing everybody’s attention to it. Ianto gave it a proper look this time, as opposed to his glance earlier. It looked like a storefront for some sort of shop, and he could just about make out a figure or two milling about inside.

“I still don’t like all of this,” Javic grumbled.

“You just don’t like it because I’ve been put in charge of the mission, for once,” Jayme pointed out. “If you hadn’t slept with Prince Zargen III-”

“Come on, he had six arms, and eight fingers on each hand. What was the Agency expecting me to do?”

“Kill him, like they asked you to?” Jayme said, putting a hand on his hip.

“I think you’re just jealous,” Javic leered argumentatively, causing Jayme to scoff.

“Jesus, Javic,” He responded. “I’m older than you, so it’s only fair I finally get my turn to lead.”

“Older, maybe, but you have vastly inferior experience,” Javic pointed out. “It’s not just that, anyway. You in charge – that I can handle. In fact, we’ve had some great nights with you giving the orders...”

Ianto rolled his eyes at their easy, flirtatious, bickering conversation. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but he hadn’t thought Jack could get much worse. He wondered how young they were here. The Hart he was standing next to couldn’t be far off the Hart he had met in Cardiff, but he had yet to get a close enough look at Jayme. 

“It’s the Agency themselves that I’m mad at. A couple years ago, they wouldn’t even have told me off for what happened with the Prince. Now they’re sending us out on missions to capture random people without even telling us what we’re arresting them for.”

“Why do we need to know? It’s our job. We’re the agents; they’ve got people back at base who deal with the ‘why’. We go out, do our job, maybe have some fun whilst doing it, and end the night in a bar getting absolutely shit-faced. What’s there to complain about?”

“It’s not why I signed up for the Time Agency,” Javic said abruptly.

“Don’t pretend you have morals all of a sudden,” Jayme argued. “You’ve never cared before.”

From a shadowed corner at the edge of the street, Ianto suddenly noticed a flurry of movement. He frowned and tried to work out any of their features, but they were shrouded in a black cloak that hid them from view. They moved quickly and quietly down the side of the street, stopping at the front of the shop window before they opened the door and went inside. It was at that point that Javic and Jayme noticed the figure, and Ianto was left wondering how long the person had been there, snooping in on their conversation.

“Over there!” Jayme hissed, quickly grabbing Javic’s arm as he began to make his way to the shop entrance.

“We’ll follow them in,” Jack decided, striding towards the pair of Time Agents to keep close behind them. Ianto and John hurried to follow him, quickly moving through the door before it could close after Javic and Jayme.

The inside of the shop was lit by the yellow light, but the tall shelves that formed walkways through the shop cast shadows across the floor. The person from before was already at the front of the shop, talking to an old greying man who had a faint bluish tinge to his skin. He looked ill, almost terminally, but his hand refused to shake as he reached out to pass an object between himself and the hooded figure. From besides Ianto, Jack let out a low whistle.

“Some of the stuff here…” he trailed off, reaching a hand over towards the nearest shelf. “Completely illegal. I’d love to take a proper look around-”

A cough from Ianto drew his attention, staring at the Welshman who had his eyebrows raised. Jack looked slightly sheepish as Ianto began to speak. “John. Why did you bring us to this particular point?”

“It’s where it all began, Eye Candy. Watch and learn. Don’t interfere, whatever you do,” he instructed. Ianto rolled his eyes, about to reply with a smart remark about knowing the rules of time travel, but was interrupted by the sound of a gun cocking.

Javic and Jayme were standing, guns pointed at the hooded figure, suddenly very threatening. Ianto moved closer to get a better look.

“My, my,” the cloaked figure spoke at last. She was still standing with her face pointing in the opposite direction of the two Time Agents. “Two boys, brandishing their weapons in my direction. I’ve had a few evenings start like this.”

With a squeak, the man from behind the counter decided it was best to make his exit, slipping through a hidden door. Javic and Jayme watched him go, paying more attention to the woman in front of them.

“Why don’t you turn around and take a look at us?” Javic growled, though Ianto could see a tell-tale twitch in his mouth that indicated his slight interest. The woman let out a low chuckle and swirled around, her cloak falling from her head to reveal long black locks of hair. Her eyes were dark in the low lighting, but her mouth was pulled into a very thin smirk. She was entirely beautiful, in a captivating, attention grabbing way. Ianto found, however, that he was more fixated on the two curved blasters she was pointing at Javic and Jayme.

“Let’s not do anything rash, Meli,” Jayme spoke coolly. “There’s two of us, and one of you.”

“Oh, the Time Agency gave you my name, did they? That’s very unlike them.”

“How do you know the Time Agency?” Javic asked, a frown settling on his face.

She grinned. “Like I thought. They don’t tell you  _ anything _ , do they?” She looked between the two men. “Figures. They always were like that.”

“Like what?” Javic asked, but Jayme sent him a glare.

“Enough chit-chat. We have a job to do, so Meli - you’re gonna have to come with us,” Jayme instructed, jostling his gun slightly in a threatening manner.

Meli stood defiantly still. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. Unless you fancy taking a chance against my own weapons.”

Jayme's jaw clenched. “You can’t escape. Give it up already. We’ll take you in, treat you just right.”

She grimaced. “I don’t want to know what _your_ kind of treatment is. Besides, I’m never going back to the Time Agency. Not after what they did to me.”

“What they did?” Javic asked, cocking his head. Meli seemed to latch onto his interest, turning her eyes to him as she suddenly looked the smallest bit vulnerable.

“Whatever they’ve told you about me, if anything, is wrong,” she spoke softly, staring directly into Javic’s eyes. “I’m innocent in this. They want to lock me up just to fit their political agenda, because losing one agent is better than admitting how corrupt their bureaucracy is.”

Ianto almost snorted until he saw the contemplative, naive look on Javic’s face. “She was listening to your conversation outside,” he pointed up, not believing the words Meli was saying. “She’s playing you, Jack.”

“I can see that,” Jack replied shortly, his eyes never once leaving the scene in front of him.

“Javic…” Jayme warned. His focus momentarily switched to his partner, and that was the only excuse Meli needed. She sent Javic a pleading look, taking off to the right as she made a beeline for one of the hanging items on the wall. Jayme swirled around, pointing his gun back towards her, but before he could do anything Javic clumsily fell into him from behind, sending them both sprawling onto the floor. Meli grabbed whatever it was that she had been looking for, and turned back to Javic.

_ ‘Thank you,'  _ s he mouthed at him, then pressed a button on the long oblong item she was holding and flashed out of the room.

Jayme pushed himself up off the floor, jerking his head in all directions as he tried to catch a glimpse of the girl.

“Damn, she used a Tracoxian Location Hopper,” Javic said, sounding none-too disappointed. “Randomised signals. She could be anywhere by now.”

Jayme whirled around and pointed a finger an inch away from Javic’s face. “That was  _ your fault.  _ You did that on purpose!”

“Who, me?” Javic asked, raising an eyebrow. “It was an accident. Sorry.”

_ “Sorry?”  _ Jayme cried. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to take responsibility for this! First time in years I’ve led one of our missions, and you’ve cocked it up for me!”

“I think there are some things that are more important than a mission,” Javic spat back, reaching a hand up to knock Jayme’s finger away from his face.

At this point, John tapped on Ianto’s shoulder to get his attention. “I don’t think we need to watch the rest of this.” 

If Ianto didn’t know better, he would’ve placed the look on John's face as carefully hidden embarrassment.

“No, no,” Jack responded, his own attention still fixed on the arguing pair. “I want to watch every bit of the memories I lost.”

With a sigh, John begrudgingly accepted that they weren’t going anywhere yet, and settled back to watch the show.

“Oh-oh. Don’t tell me you actually  _ believed  _ her little spiel?” Jayme questioned.

Javic stood taller, straightening his back. “It sounds like the kind of thing the Agency would do. I don’t wanna take her in until we get the full story.”

“And that’s  _ your  _ decision to make, is it?” Jayme barked, fury filling his face. “You just wanna find and fuck her, don’t you? You see a pretty face and start thinking with your dick instead of your miniscule brain!”

“You’re starting to sound like a jealous ex, Jayme. Why does it matter to  _ you  _ whose bed I end up in?”

Jayme stopped short, the fury freezing on his face. “Those five years don’t count for anything, then?”

“Five years?” Javic scoffed. “It was two weeks. We were the only people trapped there.”

“Oh, well-” Jayme replied, floundering all of a sudden. His shoulders sagged slightly as he tried to think of a response. From the other side of the shop, Ianto winced.

“Ouch,” Ianto muttered, side-eying Jack.

“Besides, that was all months ago,” Javic continued, not realising the effects his words were having on the man standing next to him. “Why are you bringing it up now?”

There was a heated moment of silence, where the two men glared at each other. Something in Javic’s face twitched, and a fraction of his anger melted away into confusion. “Wait. You didn’t think those two weeks actually meant anything, right?”

“No!” Jayme responded, far too quickly to be truthful. “It was just two weeks.”

“Right,” Javic said slowly, almost as if he didn’t quite believe him. “Good, because it really wasn’t anything. Convenient and fun, sure, but not anything serious.”

“Yup. Exactly,” Jayme answered, his arms crossing on his chest. He then appeared to remember why the conversation had started in the first place, and his frown returned. “Point still stands, you want to shag her, and that  _ is  _ my business because I’m heading the mission to arrest her.”

Jack scowled. “I  _ don’t  _ want to shag her. I just think we shouldn’t be too hasty about turning her in.”

“It’s not our responsibility to decide that, Javic!”

“It is now! I’m making it my responsibility.”

Jayme sent him a look. “You mean, you’re making  _ her  _ your responsibility.”

Javic looked affronted. “You think I’m so shallow, don’t you?”

“Yes. You  _ are  _ shallow, Javic.”

Javic flinched backwards, his face a storm. “I’m leaving. Good luck explaining this to our superiors.”

“This is  _ your fault _ !” Jayme shouted at his retreating form.

“Tell them that, then!” he called as he pressed a button on his wrist strap and disappeared from sight.

“Bloody,  _ fuck _ -” Jayme grumbled, kicking out violently at the wall. He hissed at the pain, hopping backwards on his good foot. The next second, he was slapping his wrist and disappearing just like Javic had.

“Well,” Ianto offered, after a tense few seconds of silence. “That was eventful.”

“Do you recognise her?” John asked, turning to stare at Jack who had finally moved his attention back to his travelling companions.

“Not one bit,” he answered honestly.

“Huh. Figures. The Time Agency did a good job with your memories, at least.”

“Well, after that amicable break-up, where to next?” Ianto asked.

“Wait a minute,” Jack cut in, creases appearing in his forehead. “Break-up?”

Ianto and John stared blankly at Jack, then met each other with a shared, disbelieving look. “So,” John continued, ignoring Jack’s question. “We’re off to the next time I meet Meli. Destination: intergalactic space bar.”

This Vortex Manipulator journey was a vast improvement on the last journey the trio had endured. There was still a semi-nauseating feeling as all of Ianto’s particles realigned themselves in the intergalactic bar they were now in, but it passed with a flash and he was able to stand up straight immediately. He looked at his surroundings, his ears overwhelmed with the music coming from a live band in the corner, as well as the noises of multiple conversations coupled with glasses clinking as various were drank. The live band itself was made up of five orange aliens, who appeared to be vibrating with excitement as they gave their all to the oddly shaped instruments they were holding. To Ianto, it sounded like a mix between 50s jazz and modern day electro. 

“Oh,” Jack gasped, cocking his head as he sniffed the air. “Sixty-third Century?”

“Beginning of the sixty-forth.” John answered. Jack’s mouth almost salivated as he looked towards the silver bar on the left of the room.

“Do you think we could grab a shot of hypervodka each? Or take a bottle home with us?” Jack questioned. “Ianto, that stuff will blow your mind.”

“No time,” John answered, his hand gesturing towards a closed off booth in the corner. Ianto peered closer and could make out two familiar figures, one female with long black hair and the other male with a cheesy flirtatious grin plastered onto his face.

“I could’ve guessed,” Ianto muttered as Javic’s hand fell onto her thigh underneath the table top, visible to the three of them as they made their way closer to the booth. Javic’s eyes shone with affection, his whole stance visibly relaxed as the alcohol in his system lowered his inhibitions (not that he had many inhibitions in the first place). He appeared to be worked up in some sort of story he was telling, waving his free hand up and down as he gestured alongside his words. Meli offered her own comment and he broke out into raucous laughter, his eyes crinkling tight, and Ianto came to the conclusion that this wasn’t the first time he had seen Meli since failing to arrest her. The way he was grinning and the raw emotion on his face was something he hadn’t seen before on Jack’s face, even when at his happiest and most emotionally vulnerable, and Ianto could tell what the signs were pointing towards.

“How long has it been since Javic met her?” he asked Hart.

John shrugged. “Dunno. Time Agent’s lives aren’t very linear,” he offered, looking around for something or someone else. “But he’s seen a fair bit of her since. I mean, look at them.”

Ianto _was_ looking at them, and he could see exactly what John meant. There was something in the way he held her, how he cupped her cheek in his hand and pulled her in for a sweet, sincere kiss that made Ianto feel like he was intruding on them by watching. Hidden off to the side, Jack looked enthralled by the display. Ianto wasn’t sure if he felt worse watching Javic and Meli kiss or watching Jack’s longing, distraught expression as he watched it happen. He swallowed.

“Did you know? At the time?” he asked John.

“Not until this evening, no,” John answered, waving his hand at a figure who was approaching the booth. Ianto quickly recognised him as Jayme, with an even stormier face than in the last memory. He stomped over towards their table and yanked Javic’s head back, effectively ending their kiss. Javic floundered for a moment like a fish out of water, until his eyes caught on Jayme.

“Jayme!” he exclaimed, his head twisted at an awkward angle as Jayme held his hair tightly in his grasp.

“You lied to me,” Jayme said coldly, and then finally let go of Javic's hair, only for long enough to pull his own hand back and form a fist with it. Ianto heard a sick crunch as it came into contact with Javic’s nose, sending the Time Agent reeling across the table as the drinks were knocked off and clattered to the floor. Meli let out a quiet squeak, pulling Javic’s head towards her as she took a blue scarf off her neck and held it to his nose to stem the bleeding.

“Jayme,” she spoke, her pleading eyes turning to the seething man. “It’s not what you think.”

“Not what I think?” he bellowed. “What do you call _this_ , then?”

Javic, still holding the scarf to his nose, pulled himself somewhat reluctantly away from Meli’s embrace. “You don’t understand. Meli explained everything to me. She’s innocent.”

Jayme’s eyes flickered to the tabletop, where Javic’s hand lay on top of Meli’s, their fingers intertwined together. He hardened at the sight, taking a deep breath.

“She’s an enemy of the Time Agency. How can you trust anything she says?”

“I just  _ do. _ You’d understand if you spent some time getting to know her. We can explain everything to you, if you would just  _ listen  _ to us,” he implored, staring at Jayme’s unconvinced expression. Javic turned to look at the girl, wonder and tenderness flying between them, almost strong enough to physically manifest into something the four onlookers could see. “I… I  _ trust  _ her, Jayme.”

The way he spoke those words made something click inside of Ianto’s brain. He could tell exactly which word Javic was silently substituting ‘trust’ for, and his heart bled a little for the man in front of him. This whole affair wasn’t going to end well for him - regardless of whether Meli could be trusted or not. The fact that there was a future version of Javic standing directly beside him with no recollection of Meli proved his point.

“Javic…” Jayme started, his face crumpling in resignation. “I’ve spent the past two month trying to find this woman. I’ve had a stain on my career for letting her go, and have been trying to fix it ever since. And now, after you’ve clearly been meeting up with her behind my back, you want me to let her go again?”

Javic looked solemnly at Jayme. “Yes. For me, Jayme. You can’t turn her in.”

“I’d be risking my entire career for you, Javic,” he said slowly. “Which I would do.”

Ianto heard a dissatisfied snort from John beside him. “Gods, I was such a wet blanket for him. I can’t believe I said that.”

Ianto gave him a consoling soft smile, indicating the younger version of John in front of him. “This Jayme. He still..?” he asked, leaving the question unfinished. He didn’t need to fill in the blank; John knew what he was asking.

“Yep,” John answered him plainly. “It was his jawline. Difficult to get out of your head.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked, one eye still trained on the people in the booth.

“Nothing. Keep watching,” John instructed. 

They turned to stare back at Javic, Meli and Jayme, who had been frozen in silence for a moment. Jayme took a deep breath.

“I’d risk my entire career for  _ you,  _ but I won’t do it for Meli. I  _ can’t. _ ”

For a brief second, something utterly horrific to look at flashed through Meli’s eyes, caught only by Ianto and not seen by either Javic or Jayme. Ianto felt a shiver go through his entire body.

“Then I guess we have no choice,” Javic said coldly. “Meli? We’re done here.”

“I can’t let you leave,” Jayme spoke quickly as the couple stood up.

“Then don’t. Take her in. But,” he challenged, puffing his chest out as he stood up in Jayme’s face. “You’ll have to give me in with her.”

“Javic!” Meli cried, tears (that Ianto highly suspected to be crocodile) springing into her eyes. “Don’t say that. You don’t deserve that fate!”

“And neither do you,” Javic responded, putting his hand on her shoulder. She smiled sweetly at him.

"Jesus Christ," Ianto and John both muttered under their breath.

“Jesus Christ,” Jayme echoed, running a hand through his hair. “Fine. I can’t hand you in, Javic. You know that.”

“Thank you,” Javic responded genuinely, letting go of Meli to walk up to the other Time Agent. He held his head in his palms, pulling him towards him as he placed a chaste kiss on his lips. Jayme pulled away from him, looking both annoyed and sad, something longing in the edges of his expression. Ianto almost felt  _ embarrassed  _ to be watching, yet found he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“This doesn't mean I’m happy with all of this,” Jayme stated, glaring at the two of them. His hand hovered over a button on his Vortex Manipulator, ready to leave. “Don’t expect me to help you when this all falls apart.”

Ianto glanced at John next to him, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Meli smiled at him. “We won’t,” she promised, though her honesty didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jayme murmured, and slammed the button on his wrist strap, ending their conversation. Javic turned to look at Meli, slightly unsure about something.

“We should talk…” he began, but Meli shook her head. She leant forwards to whisper something in his ear, running her hand further and further up the inside of his thigh as she spoke. Ianto watched as Javic’s eyes glazed over, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips, and the Welshman knew exactly what kind of thoughts were going through his brain. For a blind moment, all he wanted to do was stalk over and drag the manipulative woman out of his grasp, taking her place as he did so. Then, Meli was moving from his ear, and seconds later Javic had her pinned against the booth seat, practically devouring her mouth with a growl as he pressed as close to her as possible. 

Then they were gone, Javic’s Vortex Manipulator taking them somewhere more private.

“When you said you weren’t going to help them..?” Ianto offered to the silence that had settled over the three invisible watchers.

John laughed. “Of course I ended up helping them. Javic’s an idiot - he needs  _ someone  _ with a brain to get him out of the situations he gets stuck in.”

“You skipped a load of my memories,” Jack suddenly spoke, his voice the perfect timbre that Ianto had come to recognise as his way of masking his emotions. “A lot of them, in fact. This must be a few months after the last one you showed me.”

“Jack. I’m not spending two years of my life showing you every bit of the memories you lost. Even if I could track where you were during all of that time, five years with you was bad enough to put me off you entirely. I can’t spend another two years chasing after you.”

“You could be a  _ little  _ more detailed, though,” Jack argued, sounding like a pouting child.

“You need to remember who has the working Vortex Manipulator here. And,” John continued. “You need to trust me to know what’s important enough to show you.”

“I want to see as much as I can,” Jack insisted.

“Jack…” Ianto warned, placing an arm on Jack’s shoulder, which was promptly shrugged off. “He does have a point.”

“So what? You want me to show you the hundreds of times you took Meli back to our ship? I spent more nights sleeping in the pilot’s seat than in our shared room! You want me to show you all of that, in front of Ianto here too?” John glowered, raising an eyebrow at Jack, who lowered his head slightly in submission, refusing to acknowledge that John was right.

“So, where are we going next?” Ianto asked awkwardly into the silence.

“Somewhere Jack hasn’t been in years. In fact, this memory will show the last time Javic ever stepped foot on our ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! This chapter title was what I originally wanted the series (and book 1) to be called, but in the end we went for Time Tracks. I still managed to get it in though... (also please appreciate my chapter titles. Lauren has an incredible one for next week: Stamp on Your Heart. Anybody who guesses what this is about will get extra bonus points, and possibly a shoutout.)
> 
> The first sentence of this chapter is very relevant to Lauren's morning, because she woke up at 10 for me <3 (hungover, having gone to sleep at 5am.)
> 
> So during this zoom call, I think I lost every single one of my braincells. (Lauren attests that she had no braincells to begin with). Thank you for reading and for commenting, please keep them up! We really hope you enjoy this chapter - next one shall be a bit shorter as we had to split this 8.5k chapter into 5k and 3k!
> 
> Find us on Tumblr @garknessandbones @thirteeninafez


	5. Stamp on Your Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative Title: Ianto sees parts of John that he never thought he'd see

By this point, Ianto had just about got used to the stomach churning experience of travelling across time and space in a split-second, and this time the nauseating feeling was all but absent once he reopened his eyes. He took stock of his surroundings, noting the dimly lit narrow corridor they were standing in, the slightly dulled metallic sheen that reflected off all the walls in the ship, and the distant thrum of working machinery that no doubt emanated from the engine that powered the transport. Despite the darkness, there was enough light from the sparsely placed orange night lights for Ianto to make out a figure at the end of the corridor. Before his squinting eyes could distinguish who it was, a light turned on. He squinted against the sudden brightness until his eyes adjusted.

“Fancy seeing you here, Javic,” a familiar voice said, and Ianto whipped his head to face where the voice was coming from. Jayme was standing still, eyes narrowed with tiredness and suspicion, his hand hovering over the light switch to the room. Ianto was vaguely embarrassed to see that he was only dressed in boxer shorts (and even more embarrassingly, a pair of knee-high stripey yellow socks), which confirmed his suspicion that Jayme had come directly from bed. He was staring at the other visible man in the room.

Javic was, unlike Jayme, standing fully dressed, clutching a brown leather bag in one hand and looking like a deer caught in headlights. “Jayme,” he said, once he had regained his voice. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was until I heard you sneaking around.”

“Right,” Javic spoke, letting out a nervous laugh as he ran a hand through his hair. “Well, this is a bit awkward now.”

Jayme crossed his arm over his bare chest, an unimpressed look crossing his features. “Quite. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for a week, and now you turn up, in the middle of the night, sneaking about the ship? What’s going on, Javic?”

“Nothing,” he quickly (and fairly obviously) lied. “Just grabbing something I left here.”

Jayme took a step closer to him. “What’s in the bag?”

“Just a few bits and bobs.”

There was a moment of complete silence, where the two Time Agents simply stared at each other. Then, in the blink of an eye, Jayme was a mere arm’s length from Javic, both men with a tight grip on opposite ends of the bag. For a moment, Ianto felt like he was watching a live slapstick comedy sketch as the bag was yanked to and from the squabbling duo. 

When Jayme twisted to yank the bag from Javic and Ianto caught sight of a particularly garish tramp stamp on Jayme’s lower back, he turned, eyebrows raised to the version of John at his side. “A butterfly? Really?”

John shrugged. “What? They’re my favourite earth animal.”

“They’re not even an ani–” he cut himself off as he realised that the swirls to either side of the bright yellow butterfly were actually words. “What the  _ hell  _ does that say?”

John actually had the audacity to look proud, puffing up his chest as he said, with all the confidence of a man with no dignity left to lose: “Semen Demon.”

Ianto nearly choked on his own spit in an attempt not to bust out laughing that very instant.

He couldn’t stop himself, however, when a particularly strong pull from Jayme threw the bag into the air. It turned over a few times before landing open in the middle of the corridor. Jayme scampered to it, closely followed by a sheepish looking Javic.

“Clothes?” Jayme asked, tossing a pair of trousers over his shoulder that Javic caught before they could hit the floor. “Your legal papers? What are you doing- planning a holiday?” He sneered.

Javic said nothing. Ianto made his way closer to the pair, careful not to go further than six feet of John, and peered into the bag. It was like Jayme had said - his bag was packed as if he was planning on going away for a while. He wasn’t surprised to see how few belongings he owned; Ianto imagined Time Agents led more of a ‘living out of the suitcase’ kind of life.

“Hang on. How much money is that? Have you gone into our emergency funds?” Jayme accused, shooting Javic a livid glare.

“Maybe just a little…”

“A  _ little _ ? Javic, you’ve taken the  _ lot  _ \- haven’t you?”

Javic looked guilty, but nodded. “To be fair, this is a bit of an emergency.”

“Oh brilliant, that’s fine then,” Jayme shot back sarcastically. “You say it’s an emergency, so that excuses everything. Don’t worry about the money you’re taking - I’m  _ sure  _ I’ll find a way to sort it all out.”

Javic shrugged. “Just tell the Time Agency what happened. They’ll reimburse you.”

“Tell the Time Agency?” Jayme laughed maniacally. He then paused, rubbing his temples, before he opened his mouth to speak again. “What  _ is  _ happening here, Javic?”

Javic closed his eyes, let out a shaky breath, and opened them again. “It was Meli’s idea, actually,” he began, not seeing the way Jayme’s eyes flashed with dangerous anger. “I’m… I’m leaving. Leaving this ship, leaving the time Agency, leaving my life,” he said, voice heavy yet set with determination.

“Leaving?” Jayme repeated, his face falling. “I know you and Meli are… getting along. But why leave? You have security here - a place to stay, a job you enjoy!”

“I can’t keep working for an agency this corrupt. I can’t stand by and help them ruin innocent lives anymore. I know where my heart lies, and it's  _ not  _ here.”

Jayme flinched backwards. His face was frozen, mouth hanging open, and Ianto suddenly realised that he was feeling  _ sorry  _ for this man that he was sure he hated. He looked to John on his right, seeing him in a new light for the first time. Before he could open his mouth to say something, however, Jayme was shaking his head, finally able to speak again.

“Fine. Go,” he plainly ordered, putting a hand up to stop Javic as he took a step towards him. “Just  _ go,  _ Javic.”

It looked as if there was more that Javic wanted to say, but he bit his tongue as he bent over to repack his belongings into his bag. He paused, hand hovering over the wad of cash, and questioningly caught eyes with Jayme.

“Take it. You’re right - the agency will pay me back,” he said, resigning himself and letting out a sigh. “You know you’ll be a wanted criminal? The second you leave this ship, you’ll be on the capture-or-kill list.”

“I know,” Javic said seriously. “I won’t expect you to help me anymore. I understand what I’m doing.”

“Why do you trust her, Javic?” Jayme blurted out, clearly unable, but by no means unwilling, to stop himself.

Javic turned to stare at him. “I love her,” he stated, as if it were the easiest question in existence to answer. “I don’t expect  _ you  _ to understand that.”

And in a flash, he was gone, leaving a heavily breathing Jayme to stand and stare at the spot he had just vacated. He reached out blindly, his hand connecting with the wall, and then started to slide down it until he had collapsed in a small ball against the wall. He didn’t cry; he stared blankly ahead as if his mind was a million miles away.

“Was I really in love with her?” Jack asked, jolting Ianto away from staring at Jayme.

“You seemed to think you were, at least,” John shrugged, turning to Ianto. “Sorry you have to watch your boyfriend act like such a lovesick idiot here.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Ianto quickly, automatically snapped. Jack lifted his head up and looked at Ianto, his eyes narrowing.

“Right…” John awkwardly interrupted.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said hurriedly, turning to John. “I was blinded by my love for Meli, and didn’t appear to treat you right.”

“I, err - yeah. You didn’t,” John replied, but the slight twitch of his lip led Ianto to believe that he wasn’t as unaffected by the apology as he was trying to seem.

“Is this the end of it all, then?” Ianto asked. “Javic leaves the Time Agency, gets caught by them and has the two years wiped from his memory?”

John let out a laugh. “God, I wish it were that simple, Eye Candy. You remember the bit where Javic said he didn’t expect me to help them anymore?”

“Let me guess…” Ianto spoke, raising an eyebrow. “You ended up helping them out anyway?”

John grinned. “Give me a number between one and fifty-two.”

“Forty-six,” Jack decided.

“Then let’s go visit the forty-sixth time I saved your arse, Jack.”

“They know you’re here.”

Ianto, only just having materialised into the scene, whipped his head around to try to find the source of the voice. He took in the averagely sized room, with pale walls and a door that led out of the room. His eyes landed on a figure standing just beside the doorway, hand hovering over his Vortex Manipulator as if he had just arrived. Ianto looked at the familiar face of Jayme, seeing frustrated worry on his face. This was where the warning had come from, and as he followed his line of vision, Ianto saw that he was staring at a bed, big enough to hold the two figures who were starting to sit up, blinking bleary eyes at Jayme.

Javic and Meli looked at each other, the words finally sinking in, and then they were jumping out of bed. Ianto’s eyebrows raised a few inches as he saw that they were both stark naked, unashamed at the presence of Jayme at the foot of their bed. As they haphazardly threw clothes on, Ianto watched Jack’s face, which was switching between staring at Meli and Javic, his mouth slightly open as he watched their bodies. Ianto rolled his eyes.

“How far off?” Javic asked Jayme, stumbling and pausing to readjust the black jeans caught up around his ankle.

“A few minutes,” Jayme answered. “You’re letting yourself go, Javic. You used to have a leaner stomach. Growing soft in your old age?”

“Fuck off,” Javic grumbled in response, now instigating war with a blue sock as he tried to put it on.

“I love him  _ just  _ the way he is,” Meli snapped at Jayme, giving Javic a sycophantically kind grin. Jayme rolled his eyes.

“And you look  _ much  _ better naked than I’d imagined,” Jayme leered, though Ianto privately thought that his comment felt a little forced. “I’ve told you before; you can do far better than that guy.” He indicated Javic with his thumb.

“Ha,” Javic deadpanned. “Chuck me my bag, if you’re done insulting me?”

“I could never be done, Javic,” John replied, but dutifully reached down to grab at the discarded bag Ianto had last seen only minutes before.

“You have everything packed?” Javic asked Meli, who was tying her shoe laces.

“It’s all in that bag,” she replied.

“Pity,” Javic said as he walked to grab Meli’s arm. “I quite liked this place. Would’ve been nice to spend longer than a week here.”

He shrugged, then hit his Vortex Manipulator and disappeared.

“No need to thank me, it’s  _ really  _ no problem at all,” Jayme muttered sarcastically, knowing over a porcelain statue that stood on a table. As it crashed onto the floor, there was a flash and another figure appeared, dressed all in black with a large gun in one hand. Ianto took in their appearance, noting the long, almost black, blue hair that framed a determined, set face. Her thin eyebrows were furrowed, and her small nostrils were flared as if she was trying to sniff something out.

“Jayme,” she greeted, her voice matching the hardness of her exterior.

Jayme stood up straight and stared directly into the woman’s eyes. “Zrati. I got a signal for Meli.”

“As I did for Javic,” she responded, fiddling with something on her own wrist device. “Someone departed here moments ago, yet your arrival signal appears to be from a few minutes before that.”

“I was searching for them, and as soon as I walked into this room they took off,” he lied.

“Right,” she drawled, sounding suspicious and unconvinced. “And you didn’t immediately search for heat signatures?”

“I did. Javic knows I would - he must’ve confused the signal somehow, because I found nothing.”

“Why does this keep happening, Jayme?” Zrati icily questioned.

“I’ve told you before - Javic or Meli must have access to our information somehow to know when we’re onto them. That, or he’s able to track my Vortex Manipulator,” he stated, his glare getting impossibly harsher.

“I’ll add it to the notes on the failed mission report. Get you a new one, if there are any going spare.”

“Thanks,” Jayme said, convincing nobody in the room at the sincerity of his reply. The two of them stood staring at each other for a minute, until Zrati broke the silence.

“You must have been heading this mission for nearly a year now, Jayme,” she spoke, idly running her hand over the corner of the bed.

“Ten months, give or take,” he replied coolly, as if her words didn’t affect him.

“Hmm,” she non-committedly hummed. “You’ve heard what happens to agents who can’t complete cases within the year, right?”

Jayme’s eyebrows knitted together. “No..?”

“There’s a reason for that,” she said, grinning emotionlessly at the other Time Agent. “Demoted to the lowest of the low, or…”

“Or?” Jayme asked, swallowing.

“Well. Let’s hope you capture Meli soon, yes?”

Zrati gave him one last smile, and disappeared. Jayme let out a long breath, ran his hand through his hair, and promptly followed Zrati’s example.

“They put Zrati on my case?” Jack asked, as soon as the room had emptied.

“Yup. Tough bitch, she is. Why, do you know her?” John responded.

Jack grinned at him. “You could say that. First night as a Time Agent, she and her partner gave me what they called the ‘agency initiation’. Was a hell of a night…” He trailed off, getting lost in thoughts.

Ianto scoffed. “So that’s your only reaction so far, to all that’s happened? Remembering a night spent with the woman who’s trying to kill you?” he snapped, unsure quite where his anger was coming from.

“Well, obviously she isn’t going to kill me. I’m still here,” he replied, raising an eyebrow at Ianto.

“You’re unbelievable,” Ianto said, not sure whether to be outraged or pitiful at Jack. “None of this affects you?”

Something flashed in Jack’s eyes, for just a millisecond, but in that tiny space of time Ianto could make out a range of hidden emotions that Jack was trying to hide. Fear. Hurt. Apprehension. Embarrassment. Total vulnerability.

And when Ianto moved to grab his arm before they travelled to the next location, he was instead met with a soft, warm hand that linked its fingers between his own; the physical touch trying to convey everything that words couldn’t.

The location the trio arrived in next was, according to John, the penultimate place he would take them to see. Despite incessant questions from both Jack and Ianto, he wouldn’t elaborate further than that, so they had travelled to the next memory without knowing when or where they were going. Ianto looked around the room, a dimly lit kind of cave with echoing drops of water that appeared to be coming from the ceiling. Iridescent blue rocks shone around the cave, lighting the room enough for Ianto to see when Jayme appeared.

“Jayme. You weren’t followed?” Javic’s voice rang out, echoing over the walls which made it hard for Ianto to pinpoint him, until he stepped forwards into the blue light.

“No. But the cave will only distort our locations for a few minutes, so let’s make this quick,” Jayme replied, already walking over to them with something in his hands. Ianto frowned, unable to see what it was. From the shadows, Meli stepped forwards.

“Here. It was very difficult to get my hands on, so this better be worth it,” Jayme warned, holding the item forwards. The hidden trio moved close enough to see that it was a Vortex Manipulator, but a second later Meli had snatched it out of his hands. She held it close to her chest, looking like she was guarding it carefully. Ianto saw something triumphant in her body language, and immediately his suspicions rose.

“Come on, Javic. Let’s get out of here,” she snapped harshly, turning around to walk away from Jayme as she started to fix the wrist strap onto her arm. Javic looked up at Jayme, then twirled around himself and followed the woman away. 

“Javic!” Jayme called, evidently not ready to end the conversation here. “Javic! I have to tell you. The agency is starting to get suspicious of me. They’re-”

“Can’t talk now, Jayme,” Javic called back, starting to jog after Meli who was already pushing buttons on her own Vortex Manipulator. “Got to go.”

With that, he grabbed Meli’s arm and disappeared from sight. There was silence in the cave for a few moments, until a beeping from Jayme’s Vortex Manipulator started to sound.

“Bloody bollocks!” Jayme shouted, looking at his own wrist strap. Something had begun to flash on it, and he quickly started pressing buttons. A blue hologram popped up, showing the face of a very pissed off Zrati.

“Jayme. Where  _ are  _ you?”

“I’m - err. I’m in a cove, off the third constellation of the-” he began, but was cut off.

“Don’t worry about that now. Get back to base. We need to have a chat.”

Jayme swallowed. “Of course. I’ll be right there.”

He cut off the feed and immediately let out a string of expletives. He fiddled with a few buttons, and disappeared, leaving only Ianto, Jack and John in the room.

“What was that about?” Jack asked John, raising an eyebrow.

“Meli had been pestering me to find her Vortex Manipulator for months,” John explained, a regretful look shining towards Ianto and Jack. “I finally caved and snuck it out for her. Nearly got caught, as you can tell.”

“Why did she want it?” Ianto asked him.

John shrugged. “A criminal on the run asking for a teleportation device? Why wouldn’t she want it?”

His eyes shifted and Ianto idly wondered if he knew how obvious he looked when he lied. “What’s the real reason, John?”

“I just told you, Eye Candy,” John answered, but the matching glares on Ianto and Jack’s faces pressured him into continuing. “Okay. Look. I’m not gonna tell you, but you’ll find out soon enough.”

“So what happened next?” Ianto asked instead, changing the subject. “Did you get caught for this? Did Zrati figure out the truth.”

John gave him a horrifically regretful stare, the expression something Ianto hadn’t ever expected to see on this particular ex-Time Agent’s face. “You understand what Zrati was threatening me with the first time you saw her, right?”

“The twelve months?” Jack questioned, seeing John nod. “I never really thought about it when I was an agent.”

“You wouldn’t,” John quipped sarcastically. “Look at it from my point of view. I spent a year chasing after Javic and Meli, helping them out whenever they needed it, lying about them to the superiors every time they asked me questions about them, risking my own skin to try to keep them safe.”

“And you never even got any thanks for it,” Ianto added, trying not to send Jack a frown. Despite it being his fault, he had no memory of the past, so was the man next to him really at fault here?

“Exactly, Eye Candy. Now I’m not sure what the future me you’ve met is like,” John continued, ignoring Ianto’s snort. “But this Jayme had had just about enough of being treated like shit. Three weeks left before my mission exceeded a year, and I was at my wits end.”

“What did you do?”

John looked at Ianto. “I did the only thing I thought I could.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!!! remi here, I hope you enjoy this chapter (which is a bit shorted today bc it was originally a part of last week's chapter!) only two more to go before this little tale ends and we get (somewhat) back to canon! I'm excited to see your reactions to them! 
> 
> Uni work is piling up for the both of us, and your comments give us lots of well needed serotonin, so thank you for them (and keep them coming!) 
> 
> As ever, come find us on Tumblr @garknessandbones and @thirteeninafez


	6. One Last Trip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: Jack’s trash bastard ex, bad life decision, and current kinda-boyfriend walk into a warehouse

“Before we go any further,” John spoke, raising a hand to stop Ianto from grabbing his arm. Looks like they weren’t going to the next memory quite yet. “There are a few things I should tell you about.”

“Like what?” Jack asked, jutting his chin out. 

“Well. First off,” he said, swallowing visibly. “I  _ really  _ didn’t intend for things to work out like they did.”

“How did they..?” Ianto trailed off, prompting John to continue.

John turned to stare at him instead. “This next memory. You’re gonna see me do something which you’re not gonna like. But I really did have no choice at the time.”

Ianto nodded, cogs whirring in his brain. John looked regretful and guilty, and Ianto had an inkling of a thought about what the next memory might show. “Right. What is going to happen, then?”

“That’s the second thing I wanted to explain,” Hart continued. “I wasn’t actually there for most of this. I left soon after the beginning.”

“So, you don’t know what happened?” Jack asked, his forehead creased.

“Not fully. I only heard what happened afterwards.”

“Javic losing two years of memories?” Ianto confirmed, cocking his head in thought.

“Yup. I have no idea what actually went down. This could be a really dangerous situation that we’re about to walk into,” John warned, fixing them each a stare. 

Jack shrugged.

“Like I said earlier - it’s not like they killed me, or anything. What happened to Meli?” he asked, changing the subject with too much ease. Ianto could see, however, a bead of sweat run down the side of his head.

“I never found out. No one but the primary agents had clearance to read her files. I never heard from her again.”

“So let me get this straight,” Ianto started, trying to work things out into some sort of order in his head. “You’re taking us to the next memory, not knowing what happens there, other than Javic returning with two years of memories gone and Meli never being heard of again?”

“Just about summed it up, Eye Candy,” John agreed. “Ready to go, then?”

Ianto turned to stare at Jack, his mouth open. Jack was staring past Ianto, his thoughts flying far from the damp, blue shining cave they were still standing in. “Jack?” Ianto asked, reaching to touch the top of his left hand with the tips of his fingers.

Jack’s eyes snapped to look at him, something decided in his mind. “Let’s do this.”

They arrived in a warehouse, lit by fluorescent yellow overhanging lights that cast shadows across the room, permeating the darkness caused by the windowless walls. It was about as large as a rugby pitch, open and barren with greying concrete-like walls and floors. There wasn’t much on the floor that could provide cover - just a set of steel containers that lined two of the walls. 

The quiet emptiness was broken by the appearance of one person, followed no more than five seconds afterwards by two more figures. Unsurprised, Ianto recognised them as tha main characters of this story they were following, Jayme, Javic and Meli.

“You came,” Jayme stated, standing opposite the other two, only a few metres away from them.

“You said there was a problem?” Javic asked, snack ramrod straight and hands held behind his back. It was like he was trying to look intimidating, protective of his companion. “What’s the news, Jayme?”

Jayme regarded them for a second, finished fiddling with something on his Vortex Manipulator, and then spoke. “It’s to do with the agency. They’re-” he started, but broke off, shaking his head. “You’ve got to believe me when I say that there was nothing I could do. I had no choice.”

“No choice?” Meli asked cooly, putting her hand towards the gun on her belt. Her own Vortex Manipulator was now attached tightly to her wrist.

“What’s going on?” Javic demanded, even more tense, if that was possible.

“I’m sorry,” Jayme hung his head low, unwilling to catch Javic’s eye. The next second there was another blink of light, and Zrati appeared next to Jayme. She had two weapons in each hand, both pointed towards the two fugitives in front of her. She gave them a wide, shark-like grin.

“Evening, Javic. Meli,” she greeted.

“Zrati!” Javic called, pulling his own gun out of his belt to train it on her. “What have you done, Jayme?”

Jayme ignored him, and Zrati turned her head a minuscule amount to talk to him. “If you’re gonna go, then do it now.” She spoke quietly enough that Ianto was only just able to hear her. Jayme nodded, shot one more hard, regretful look at Javic, and disappeared out of the room.

Zrati began to press a few buttons on her Vortex Manipulator, keeping one gun still trained on Javic and Meli. “Back-up is on the way. There’s no escape for you two now.”

“We need to go,” Javic hissed, grabbing Meli’s arm as he frantically began to tap on his wrist strap. He stopped, looking at Zrati with his mouth open, then pressed even harder on the teleporter, again having no luck. “What did you do?”

Zrati laughed, a hard, malicious thing. “I’ve put this area in a teleportation-lock. Nobody gets out.”

_ “Javic!” _ Meli hissed, looking round the warehouse to see if there was any escape. There were a set of bolted metal doors at the opposite end, and Meli took one step towards them.

“Ah, ah-” Zrati interrupted, waving her gun threateningly. “Don’t take a single step further, or I’ll shoot.”

“You wouldn’t. You need me alive,” Meli sneered, but a peel of laughter coming from the other woman stopped her.

“You really think that you’re important enough to stop me shooting you? We’ve been searching for you for almost a whole year now. You’re coming with us - dead or alive.”

Meli froze. “We’ll shoot you first,” she said, cocking her own gun as she looked to Javic to check he was doing the same.

Then, before she could act, there was a series of flashes of white light, and half a dozen other Time Agents appeared behind Zrati. She smirked. “You were saying?”

Meli cursed loudly, pushing herself slightly away from Javic, and thus away from Ianto. They almost made a diamond of groups - Zrati and her guards opposite Javic, and Meli opposite the hidden Jack, John and Ianto. There were so many guns, each pointed in other directions, but nobody was brave enough to shoot; the fear of starting a fight that might cost them their lives stopping them.

“You can’t do this,” Javic spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room. “Meli is innocent. We’re both innocent. Your lies and hypocrisy didn’t work on me, and they won’t work on the other agents.”

Zrati frowned. “Meli is the  _ furthest  _ thing from innocent. She’s a murderer and-”

“No she’s not!” Javic bellowed. “You’re all lying! The agency is corrupt, and blame innocent people for their own mistakes!”

“Javic…” Meli spoke, her grip on her weapon tightening.

“No! I’m not gonna stay quiet! I don’t care if it gets me killed - I’m not gonna stand here and let you die for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Didn’t commit?” Zrati asked, snorting in confusion. “Javic, you can’t believe a word she says. What did she tell you?”

He swallowed heavily. “She told me that she’s had to run from the agency, because of the crime she was accused of. A mission went wrong. The board decided it was better to blow up a town of peaceful civilians rather than let the truth of what the agency did to their people escape. And instead of taking the blame, they pinned it on Meli. Told everyone  _ she  _ blew the city up, that she’s a psychopath. Which  _ isn’t true!” _

Zrati fixed him a look. “Is it not?”

Javic looked at her, and she cocked her head towards her left. Javic followed her movement, looking towards where Meli was standing.

Her gun was pointed right at Javic.

“I don’t - what? Meli?” Javic’s grip on his own gun faltered as he began to breath heavily.

Meli let out a cynical, harsh laugh. “Poor little Javic. So  _ easy  _ to play. So  _ eager  _ to believe my lies. So  _ naive  _ to think that I love him.”

The blood pounded in Ianto’s ears as he stared at the crumpled, crestfallen face of Javic. He looked utterly devastated, the words not quite permeating into his brain and cementing as fact.

“What are you talking about?” he weakly stuttered. “Meli. I love you. What are you saying?”

“You really do love me? Oh, Javic, Javic, Javic,” she mocked, shaking her head and tutting. “I was on the run for months, and then fate dropped you into my path. You and that love-sick puppy, Jayme. You know? I don’t know who was worse, between the both of you - which one of you was blinded the most?”

“Jayme? What are you talking about?” Javic whispered, brows knotting together.

“You’re so emotionally inept. It’s what made this all so easy,” she laughed. “You can’t tell that your work partner has been in love with you for years. You instead believe that a girl you met once fell in love with your sleazy charm - with your mediocre fuck.”

“Hey!” Javic exclaimed, looking offended, hurt and at a complete loss. “We’re more than that! We have a proper connection - you  _ love  _ me!”

“I don’t love you, Javic! I was  _ using  _ you,” she spat, grin turning into an explosive grimace. “ _ I  _ blew up the city.  _ I  _ had to run from the Time Agency.  _ I  _ told you lies to make you help me.”

Javic reeled backwards, only stopping when he heard guns cocking. Ianto swallowed, barely able to stand the terrible emotion on Javic’s face. This man in front of him was still, in essence, Jack Harkness- and he hated to see any version of the man he loved in pain. He turned to the Jack next to him, seeing him watching the events with rapture. His mouth was hanging open, and his fists were clenched at his side. John was watching intensely, a knowing expression on his face, as his warnings and predictions were coming true right in front of him in the most painful way imaginable.

“What were you planning to do? Stay with Javic forever, living a lie for the rest of your life?” Zrati demanded, glaring at Meli.

“No, definitely not. A year with him was entirely enough for me. To be quite honest, I’m pretty much done with him now. He’s served his purpose,” she explained, almost conversationally.

Javic shot a glare at her. “I’m so glad to have been of assistance.”

“Oh, but you were. You were my safety net. A Vortex Manipulator to get us both away when the Time Agents came knocking on our door. And, possibly even more useful, insider information from Jayme. You know, it really is a shame that he wasn’t as naive as you,” she spoke, pretending to look to the ceiling and consider the possibility. “It could’ve been fun. Jayme and I, or perhaps the three of us together.”

Javic growled, but his response was weak. His legs looked like they might give out at any second. Meli continued. “But in the end, I got what I needed from him, too.”

“Your Vortex Manipulator,” Zrati cut in, looking at the wrist strap on her arm.

“So you no longer needed  _ me  _ to travel,” Javic added.

“Not just that!” Meli grinned wickedly. “You see, before I blew up the city, before I went completely rogue, I did something else to the agency. And they still don’t know.”

“What did you do, Meli?” Zrati demanded, pointing her gun at the woman.

“This Vortex Manipulator. It’s not just a means of transport for me,” she explained slowly and patronisingly, as if the people around her were children. “I downloaded every single bit of information the agency owns onto this strap. Every hushed up mission. The bank details for all of their funding. Every single military code for the weapons of mass destruction we own.”

Simultaneously, everybody in the room took a deep breath. Meli smiled a diabolically evil grin, her features morphing until she looked like an entirely deranged lunatic. “Do you want to know the best part?”

Zrati growled at her through ground teeth.

“At the press of two buttons, this entire planet that we’re on will be eradicated.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Javic said, but he looked unsure as to whether he even believed it.

“Wouldn’t I?” she replied, raising an eyebrow. Javic faltered, shoulders drooping further.

“Meli, you don’t have to do this,” Zrati spoke, changing tactics. “We’re not going to kill you. We just want to take you in for questioning, and-”

“-And you’ll take my Vortex Manipulator away, and the second you’ve done that there’ll be a bullet in my head. I know how this goes,” Meli finished. The Time Agents looked uncomfortable, looking to Zrati for instructions that she didn’t appear to know how to give.

“Look at the cogs whirring in your brain,” Meli mocked. “You’re trying to figure out a way to win, aren’t you? There’s  _ nothing  _ you can do here, except let me leave. Hell, I’ll chuck Javic in for you if you really want to walk home with something.”

Javic looked up at his name. “Meli. Please. This isn’t you.”

“How many  _ times  _ do I have to spell it out for you,  _ idiot _ ?” she shouted, her voice echoing across the room. “I. Don’t. Love. You. I was  _ playing  _ you. Get  _ over  _ yourself!”

“Meli,” Javic continued, putting his hands up in front of him as he took a step closer. “I promise you. You don’t have to do this.”

Ianto looked across at Meli. There was a minute shift across her features, more of a twitch than anything else, but Ianto knew that look. He’d seen it in the face of his captor in a warehouse a few months prior, seconds before Rhys had been hit with a bullet. He’d seen it in CCTV footage of Suzie as she made her decision, moments before Jack was shot in the forehead and killed. He recognised the look reflected in Meli’s eyes, and a sense of horror washed over him.

Before he knew what he was doing, he was running. His legs moved on auto pilot, getting further from Jack and John behind him.

“Ianto!” John called, sounding surprisingly worried. In slow motion, he heard Jack call out his name too, the cry reverberating through the warehouse. Then, six feet away from John, he became visible to everybody else in the room, and each figure whipped around to look at him. Ianto didn’t care, because as Meli turned her head, her fingers twitched on the trigger of her gun, letting out a flash of light as the bullet began its journey towards its intended target.

But Ianto had been quicker: quicker to see the plan formulating in her brain; quicker to reach the line of fire; quicker to react than anybody else in the room.

And then he was in front of Javic, a flare of complete and utter pain throwing him backwards from where he was suddenly hit on the top of his chest. He felt blinded, and for a second he seemed to lose consciousness as he fell backwards, opening his eyes again to find himself close to the floor, a soft, warm body being the only thing between him and the cold, dirty warehouse concrete.

Blithely, he heard someone cry out his name, and saw a figure move into the edges of his vision. There was another loud bang, and he noted a girl (what was her name? Meli?) collapse to the floor, something red flying from her head. Ianto blinked, and the world shifted on its axis once again. He now could feel his legs touch the cold floor, his upper chest and head the only part of him still lying on the body underneath him. Pain blossomed, hitting him in waves and pulses of intense, burning fire that stabbed up and down his body like knives. He registered, slowly, as if his brain really didn’t want to accept the truth, that he was dying.

There was a low moaning that he had assumed was coming from somewhere in the room, but as he swallowed it stopped, starting up again when he reopened his mouth. Oh. That was him. Across the room he heard the noise of guards crying out at someone to halt, further sounds of guns cocking echoing through his painfully throbbing mind.

His head, which had been lolling uselessly where he lay, finally decided to right itself, allowing him to stare upwards and see the face that was looking down at him. It was Jack, and suddenly everything felt ten times better, because he  _ recognised  _ the palms that gently held his head, and took comfort in the warm legs he was lying on.

“Jack,” he croaked out, each breath feeling like an intense effort.

“No,” Jack answered. “I’m not Jack. I’m Javic.”

Ianto mulled over that for as long as his brain could cope, and then gave up thinking. There was something he couldn’t quite remember, something that niggled at the back of his mind to tell him exactly  _ who  _ Javic was, but it didn’t matter to him. He was dying, but he was in the arms of the man he loved, and that was all he could have hoped for really.

He thought back to the times he had wondered about dying before. As a Torchwood employee, he knew deep down that he was unlikely to make it to the grand age of thirty. He had accepted that, and had just hoped that when he died, it would be meaningful. Saving the world, or stopping an alien invasion, perhaps. He had thought he’d died on the game station, killed by a Dalek, but then he hadn’t, for whatever reason. It didn’t matter. He was looking up at Jack, suddenly remembering just  _ why  _ he had jumped in front of the bullet, and a smile spread across his face. The man he was staring into the eyes of? He was  _ worth  _ dying for.

“Jack-” he spoke again, trying to reach up a hand, but the pain from his chest intensified hideously, so much that he cried out helplessly.

“Don’t, please, stay still,” Jack said, his eyes welling slightly. Ianto wondered why he looked so confused; why his eyes were filled with unsure, unfamiliar emotions, rather than love, but then his own hand landed on soft, warm skin, and he tenderly touched Jack’s cheek. His thumb was making jerky movements that triggered pain to flare in his chest, but it didn’t matter. He was going to die soon, whatever happened.

“Who are you?” Jack asked, moving to put his own hand over Ianto’s. The dying man sighed shallowly, twitching his fingers underneath Jack’s just to feel every callus on his palm, every ridge of the creases on his fingers. There were certainly,  _ certainly,  _ worse ways to die than this.

“Ianto!” He heard a faraway voice call, but his hearing was slowly getting worse, voices sounding like they were coming from underwater. He closed his eyes, and then wondered why he hadn’t decided to do that before, because the pain seemed to fade as his eyelids shut.

“Who are you?” Jack repeated, sounding frantic as Ianto forced his eyes open again.

“Ianto,” he stuttered, suddenly tasting a bitter, coppery taste in his mouth. He coughed, the feeling reverberating through his chest, but the pain was starting to ebb away. He felt, rather than heard, Jack’s intake of breath from above him. “Ianto Jones”

“Why did you do this, Ianto?” he choked out, a single tear slipping down the side of his cheek, landing on Ianto’s forehead. “You took the bullet for me - you didn’t have to  _ do  _ that!”

“I… I  _ love  _ you,” Ianto whispered, his grip on Jack’s cheek weakening as his arm dropped back down to his side. His limbs felt heavy all of a sudden, and the act of taking a breath felt like it was taking a great deal more effort than before. Which began to panic him, as he remembered something in the back of his brain about the importance of breathing. And then, in the panic, he felt he needed to breathe  _ more,  _ and his chest was flaring with intense, stinging pain once again. “Jack-'' he gasped.

“Shh,” Jack replied, stroking his hand tenderly over his hair. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re okay.”

“Ahh-” Ianto painfully groaned, shutting his eyes. “I’m - I’m glad”

Ianto smiled, because the pain was gone and his mind was empty, and Jack’s hands were still cupping his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I would let Meli use me for a year, she sounds sexy" - a quote from Lauren this afternoon. (We both agree on this. Also Zrati too)
> 
> anyway!! shout out to hotchocolatedictator for predicting this like,, 3 whole weeks ago in the comments section? the final chapter of this double episode thriller will be posted a week today! things are getting busy busy for the two of us at the moment, but thankfully we have the next month of chapters already written!
> 
> as always, we love your comments so much!! find us on tumblr @garknessandbones @thirteeninafez


	7. Losing Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative Title: We're sorry, pls don't hate us

“ _ Ianto! _ ” Jack screamed, his voice cracking as he called out, lungs screaming for air that he was unable to breathe in. He wasn’t focused on the gun he held, still metaphorically smoking from the shot just moments prior, nor was he focused on the collapsed woman, halfway across the warehouse from him, that the bullet had lodged itself inside. He was focused on Ianto Jones, collapsed on the floor with a sickeningly dark pool of red liquid spilling around him. His heart stopped beating, ears stopped hearing, as all his senses abandoned him until it was just Jack and the distance between him and the dying man.

“Shit, Jack. You shot her. You shot Meli,” John said from behind him, but Jack couldn’t even register the words past the fact that someone was speaking. He stepped towards the body, despite the noise of multiple guns cocking as he did so, because it didn’t matter if  _ he  _ got shot - he had to make it to Ianto’s side; had to hold him and get him  _ help _ .

“Stop right there!” Zrati shouted, and before he could move further there were a pair of strong arms around him, holding him back and preventing him from closing the gap between him and Ianto.

“No,  _ no! _ ” he cried out. “Let go of me! Get  _ off  _ me!”

Jack squirmed, but the arms didn’t relent, keeping him stuck in place as he saw the younger version of himself reach out to put his hand over Ianto’s on his face. His eyes stung.

“Please, please,  _ please, _ ” he mumbled incoherently, slumping against the arms as his legs forgot how to work.

“It’s okay, just stay still, there’s no point getting yourself killed too,” John’s voice in his ear said quietly. And those words  _ did  _ register to Jack, enough that he realised that  _ somebody  _ had been killed, and he knew Ianto was dying on the floor, whilst he watched on helplessly.

“What the  _ bloody fuck  _ is happening here, Jayme? Where did you appear from? Why are there two Javic’s here? Who the hell just took a bullet for-” a voice was speaking, but Jack surged up in a sudden burst of renewed energy and broke out of the arms holding him. He tore across the warehouse floor, not stopping at any of the shotus he heard behind him, eyes fixed on one person and one person only.

He reached Ianto’s side three seconds later, collapsing onto the floor without caring about the blood that would immediately start staining his trousers. He reached a hand out, but it faltered before it could touch Ianto. His chest was a mess - his crisp, white shirt now red and bloody, a large hole in the top right of it showing a sticky black mess of flesh and blood sitting just above the heart. Jack choked back a sob, reaching instead to put a hand on his cheek, but then he realised somebody else had already beaten him to it.

“What the fuck?” Javic asked, looking directly into his own eyes.

It was weird, staring at himself, the younger, naive version he had been chasing memories of for the past few hours. Any other time, Jack would’ve had a field day with this turn of events, but the Welsh body in front of him was multitudes more important, and he had just caught sight of Ianto’s closed eyes.

“Ianto…” Jack whispered brokenly, prising Javic’s hand off his cheek and replacing it with his own. “Ianto, please. Don’t go.”

“He’s gone,” Javic said, his face as white as a sheet. “I’m sorry, he’s already-”

_ “No he’s not!”  _ he wailed. “Ianto, Ianto, Ianto,  _ Ianto-” _

He broke off, pulling the body closer to him as he rocked softly on the spot. He heard footsteps, falling closer to where he was cradling Ianto’s body, getting louder as they approached.

“Javic, hands up!” Zrati ordered, but Jack ignored her. His younger counterpart, however, put his hands up instead.

“No, not you, Ja-” Zrati started, then gasped, almost comically loud. “Javic? What’s going on here?”

“I don’t  _ know _ !” Javic responded. Jack continued to mumble incoherently, his own body curling further in on itself until he was bent protectively around the body. Jack’s lips were in Ianto’s hair, his arms around Ianto’s neck, and his chest around Ianto’s still warm body, as if hiding the blood and keeping him warm would stop death from taking him away. Words flew over Jack’s head, only the briefest of phrases reaching his brain.

“-there two of you?-”

“-don’t have any idea-”

“-planned all along?-”

“ _ -no fucking idea  _ what’s-”

And then there was a hand on Jack’s shoulder, pulling him away from Ianto and ripping him back into the present.

“Jack.” John’s voice was steady. Jack wriggled and jerked until the hand flew off him, realising (now that his face wasn’t tucked against Ianto’s head) that his cheeks were wet, and he was shaking with large, gut-wrenching sobs. With John’s hand gone, he wrapped himself even tighter around Ianto, deciding there and then that nothing was going to make him let go.

“You tell me what’s happening, right now Jayme,” Zrati threatened, the noise of a gun cocking accompanying her words. “Else I’ll shoot Javic this second.”

Jack wondered for a second which Javic she was talking about, and then decided that it didn’t really matter.

“Don’t shoot!” John hissed, sounding worried. “He’s in shock, he’s  _ grieving.  _ I can explain.”

“Grieving? He just shot the girl he’s in love with,” Zrati spat back.

Before any further argument could occur, there was a sudden ‘whooshing’ noise, accompanied by a random breeze that shouldn’t have existed in the closed walls of the warehouse. Everybody in the room, even Jack, turned their heads to the source of the noise. Before their very eyes, a tall blue box began to materialise, fading in and out of existence as the whirring noise continued. Finally, with a loud bang, the Tardis landed, solidifying on the floor off to the right of everybody else, close to where Ianto, Jack and John had been hidden whilst watching the earlier events unfold.

Jack watched on as the newly familiar face of the Doctor exited the doors, eyes scanning around the room until they landed on the scene in front of him, horror immediately filling his expression.

_ It’s all my fault. _

The Doctor stumbled slightly, reaching out a hand to ground himself as he grabbed the side of the Tardis and leant against it. There was a body lying on the ground, pooling with blood, his face a peaceful parody of the man who had been traveling on his ship. Ianto was lying on the floor, half supported by Jack, who’s puffy red eyes and tear stained cheeks were evidence enough that there was no hope for him. The Doctor felt sick. It was  _ his  _ fault that he hadn’t been here. If he’d just been that bit  _ quicker,  _ latched onto the coordinates of Jack’s Vortex Manipulator a few seconds earlier, he could’ve turned up before a weapon was fired, and his friend wouldn’t be lying dead in a pool of his own blood.

He felt Rose move out of the Tardis to stand beside him; heard her gasp loudly as she realised what was happening in the room in front of them; felt her hand grab his forearm in a death-tight grip, as if she needed the touch to comfort her. He took another few seconds to take in the scene, before Rose was running towards the body on the floor.

“Don’t move!” a woman, with dark blue hair and a large gun in one hand, shouted at his Rose, who faltered for a second.

“Don’t move?” the Doctor repeated, frowning as he squared his shoulders. “And who are  _ you  _ to give me, or anybody I know, orders?”

The woman bristled. “Agent Zrati, head of the Time Agency respo-”

“The Time Agency?” the Doctor asked coolly. He looked at Rose, who was still frozen and looking at the exchange, and noted the tears which were beginning to fall down her face. His mouth twitched down at that, and he gave her a nod. She fell back into her run, this time not stopped by anybody else in the room. 

“Do you know who I am?”

The room was silent, except for a few murmuring quiet conversations coming from the people huddled around Ianto. Something inside Zrati’s stance changed, as if she could recognise the power that the man in front of her held.

_ “Do you know who I am?”  _ he shouted, his voice echoing across the room.

“No, sir,” Zrati muttered, her eyes looking downwards.

He faltered, his anger bubbling through his veins, and tried to get a grip on his fury. “You  _ Time Agents  _ gallivant across the fabric of the universe, using your idiotic technology to supposedly keep order across timelines. A group of glorified cops, signing up anybody with an adequately inflated ego, and pretending you have some sort of morals when doing your job. Look where that got you!”

He pointed towards the group of people, huddled on the floor. “A woman,  _ dead _ . One of my closest friends,  _ dead _ . Two versions of the  _ same man _ , not even six feet away from each other. It’s a wonder we aren’t being thrown into the whirling vortex of a time paradox as we speak,” he spat, gesticulating harshly with his arms. “Look at all that, and you tell me that you are proud to be a Time Agent.”

Zrati, and the guards behind her, all hung their heads even further in shame. The Doctor took a great deal of satisfaction from this, knowing that his words were getting through to the imbeciles in front of him. He felt jittery, as if Time itself was coming undone around him. He looked towards the group on the floor, almost having to avert his eyes at the sight of the two Jacks so close together. This was  _ never  _ supposed to have happened, and as much as he could shout and rage at the Time Agents in front of him, he had to accept his own part of the events of today. He was a Time Lord, and he should never have let any of this happen. He shouldn’t have let John onto his ship in the first place, should have been quicker to follow the signal of Jack’s Vortex Manipulator.  _ Stupid  _ him and his need to show off to Rose.

The Doctor strode up until he was only a few feet away from Zrati. “You,” he began, poking a finger against her chest. “You. Take your little group of agents and report back to your superiors. Tell them just how badly their mission went; tell them how close you came to disrupting the very fabric of time and space. And you tell them,” he continued, voice low as he stared into her fearful eyes. “You tell them that the last living Time Lord is here to sort out the mess their agency left behind.”

Zrati nodded, head bobbing up and down quickly and nervously, turning around to the guards who were watching their leader. “Well?” she hissed, letting a bit of her anger and stress bleed into her words. “You heard the man. Get to it!”

With a series of flashes, each Time Agent disappeared out of the warehouse until only Zrati was left. She gave a glance towards Javic, giving him one more lingering look, before she was disappearing from sight, leaving a quiet, dark warehouse. 

The Doctor looked towards the people left in the room, all still huddled over Ianto. He felt a flash of nausea again when his eyes landed on the two Jacks, but when that gave way he realised he was feeling  _ angry.  _ As much as he himself was to blame for what had happened, now that he had kicked the Time Agents out he could finally assess what had happened to his companions. A lot of the blame lay on Jack himself. It was him that had first run off in search of his lost memories, the temptation of his past life blinding him to the dangerous consequences that could happen if he meddled too far. And he had done just that - meddled  _ far  _ too far, and now Ianto was lying in a pool of his own blood, dead.

Oh God.

The Doctor stormed over, face morphing into anger. He looked at John, but didn’t even have time to consider his anger towards  _ that  _ particular meddling Time Agent. The four of them looked up at his footsteps, looking towards him as he approached. The older Jack looked almost  _ hopeful,  _ as if the Doctor was going to waltz over and magically sort out the mess he had created, bringing life back to the empty vessel that once went by the name ‘Ianto Jones’.

“Jack,” he began, coldly. He tried not to show his anger by keeping his face passive, but something must have given him away because Jack’s hopeful expression quickly changed into something terribly fearful. “We need to sort out your memories,  _ right now _ . Before some sort of time paradox erupts around us.”

Jack hung his head, suddenly reaching out a quick hand towards Ianto. For some reason, he was beginning to shake, but the Doctor decided to ignore it, turning instead to the younger Jack. “I’ll deal with  _ you _ , first.”

He gave the younger Jack a look, and watched as he quickly scampered to his feet. There was blood, too much blood, staining and beginning to coagulate on his shirt, and the Doctor was suddenly reminded of how youthful this version of Jack was. Two years would be a lot for him to lose, but the Doctor knew what had to be done to keep the timelines intact with what Jack had told them about his past. He was, after all, the last of the Time Lords, and it was his duty to keep order within the timelines of the universe.

From the minute she had stepped out of the Tardis and realised what was playing out in the scene in front of her, Rose had wanted to do nothing more but run to her best friend's side. He was on the floor, lying in a sickening amount of blood, and all her mind could focus on was reaching him. The second the Doctor had nodded his consent to her, she had been off, racing towards the group huddled there. She hadn’t questioned the presence of the younger, highly confused Jack who had Ianto leaning slightly on him. Instead, she bent down, collapsing onto her knees as she tried to not think about what she was kneeling in.

“Ianto,” she called breathlessly, placing her hand on his still warm forehead. “Ianto,  _ no _ !”

Jack looked up at her, his eyes red and puffy. He shook his head slowly, eyes refilling with more tears to join the ones that hung on his cheeks. He averted his eyes, leant back over and pressed his head against Ianto’s chest, an arm going around his back to hold him. Rose choked on a sob, wondering how her life had done a u-turn from the cheeky, bubbling happiness of watching the Doctor chase Jack’s Vortex Manipulator across the galaxy, to this moment here.

Rose collapsed, an arm reaching out to land on Jack’s back whilst her other arm stayed on Ianto’s forehead, softly running up and through his hair. She leant her head against Jack’s shoulder, allowing her cries to be muffled by his coat. They stayed like that for a good few minutes, not taking in anything that was happening around them, or any words the Doctor was spitting out at the Time Agents.

“Rose, right?” a voice she recognised from earlier on in the day spoke, a large warm palm on her shoulder accompanying the question. She pulled away from Jack, leaving him on top of Ianto.

“It’s John, yeah?” she questioned, wiping her eyes with her sleeves as she tried to suppress her sobs.

“That’s me,” he replied, rubbing his hand softly over her back. Rose thought John seemed at least a hundred times nicer, kinder and less volatile than the man she had saved from a prison earlier on in the day. “I’m so sorry.”

Rose shook her head minutely, not wanting to accept his apology just yet, as doing so would mean accepting that her best friend was actually, properly, totally dead. She didn’t even know what had happened here. For all she knew, it was John’s fault that Ianto was… That he… 

She blinked slowly, and felt hot tears fall again. It couldn’t be John’s fault, she reasoned, because there was no way Jack would’ve let him live this long if it was. “What happened?” she instead asked.

“He died a hero’s death,” John explained kindly. “Ran out in front of a bullet destined for Javic.”

At this, the younger Jack looked up, his face a mess of confusion and hurt. He was staring at Ianto as if he was an alien; foreign and completely unknown. Rose felt a little curiosity bleed through her anguish as she looked at Jack’s past self. She wondered if this Jack had ever considered that there would be someone who loved him enough to take a bullet intended for him.

As if on cue, Javic began to speak. “He - he said he  _ loved  _ me. He took a bullet for me, because he  _ loved me _ .” His eyes welled up. Rose took a sharp intake of breath, trying to quell the cry that threatened to escape her.

From his position lying on Ianto, Jack suddenly shot up, eyes bloodshot as they turned to Javic. “He said that? He said he- he-?” Jack called, unable to form the words. Javic nodded at him, and Jack let out a shaky breath. “You promise? He said ‘love’?”

Rose looked up at him, and her heart began to break all over again. Jack’s expression looked both so hopeful, and yet so regretful at the same time. “Jack,” she began, reaching out a hand.

He jerked away from her. “I never said it to him. I should’ve- we didn’t- I-”

“He knew,” Rose said honestly, finally succeeding in reaching across to put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I promise you he knew.”

Jack’s lip was trembling again, words unable to form. It was at this point that Rose heard the noise of an approaching figure, and as she turned around, she saw the Doctor marching towards them. She put out a weak smile, but immediately retracted it the second she saw his thunderous gaze.

“Jack,” he spoke. “We need to sort out your memories,  _ right now _ . Before some sort of time paradox erupts around us.”

And then the Doctor was looking at Javic, ordering him up, and the younger man was turning back around to stare at the group. Jack was shaking, his hand on Ianto’s chest. 

Javic pulled up his sleeve and started fiddling with his wrist. He undid and pulled off something that looked like a thin, black leather bracelet, and slowly bent back over Ianto’s body. He attached it to his limp wrist, pulling it tight, and then stood up to face the Doctor, who nodded at him and began to walk back towards his Tardis.

Jack barely registered his younger self leaning over Ianto, almost wanting to snatch his hand away as he reached for his arm. He allowed him to touch Ianto, solely because of the distraction of what he was attaching to Ianto’s wrist.

“My bracelet,” he whispered, as the figure retreated. He reached out a hand to trace the band, feeling the familiar worn down leather on the tips of his fingers, against the cold skin on Ianto’s wrist. He hadn’t seen this since… well, since he had woken up missing two years of his own memories. Slowly, in the back of his mind, he registered the sound of the Tardis whirring, and looked up to scan for the time machine. “Is he gone?”

“Who? Javic?” Rose asked, frowning.

“No,” Jack continued, swallowing. “The Doctor.”

“Yes, he’s gone,” John answered, when it became apparent that Rose wasn’t going to respond. 

“Good. Then I need to leave,” Jack said, swallowing as he picked up the courage to stand up. This could be his only chance of escape, of getting out of here.

“What do you mean, leave?” Rose questioned, sounding nervous. “Where to?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Away from here. Somewhere the Doctor can’t find me.”

“Why?” Rose asked, her mouth hanging open. Jack closed his eyes, and linked vision with her.

“You heard what he said. ‘We need to sort out your memories. I’ll deal with you first.’ He’s not just going to take Javic’s memories,” he spoke, voice wobbling.

“He wouldn’t. The Doctor wouldn’t do that. He’s no reason to,” Rose consoled, not at all succeeding in convincing Jack.

“But it all makes sense. Ianto-” he said, voice only cracking a little on his name. “-Ianto said that in the future, the me he knows has no memory of meeting him before. The Doctor’s gonna have to take away all of my memories of him, now that he’s - now he-”

He swallowed, and closed his eyes. “Oh, God,” John said, sounding serious for once. “You’ve finally regained memories of Meli, and now you’re gonna have to forget again. And forget Ianto too.”

“I won’t let him!” Jack snarled, grinding his teeth together all of a sudden. “Nobody’s gonna take my memories. Not of  _ him _ .”

Rose turned her face towards him, her face calm despite the tear tracks that still stained her cheeks. “He’s not like that. The Doctor wouldn’t do that to you, or to Ianto. There must be another reason that the future you can’t remember.”

“We barely even know this Doctor!” Jack shouted, his face hurt. “He’s changed, Rose. He’s not the man we knew. You saw what he was like with the agents here. You saw how  _ angry  _ he was when he looked at me.”

Rose shook her head, but didn’t protest. Jack wondered if she was having her own doubts with the new face and personality the Doctor was wearing. He tried not to worry about that, and instead turned towards John. “John. Please. One more favour,” he said, trying not to sound like he was begging. “Get us out of here. Let me take him away, bury him properly. Don’t let me forget him.”

There was a moment where everything stood still, silence ringing across the room. Jack was standing away from the others, almost as if he was preparing to run if they didn’t agree to help him. And then, something completely impossible happened.

Ianto Jones took in a deep breath and jolted upwards.

Coming back to life was nothing, absolutely  _ nothing  _ compared to what he had imagined Jack was going through every time he died and resurrected himself. He remembered pain, then a half-lucid conversation between himself and Jack, and then Nothing. Immense blackness so suffocating and all-consuming that he couldn’t bear to think about it any further. If he even tried to recall what had happened in the void between worlds, his head swam all over again and it felt like he would die anew, so he decided wholeheartedly to not think about anything except the here and now.

Which included people around him, staring at him as if he was Jesus himself.

“That’s a hell of a trick, eye candy,” John spoke, sounding entirely dazed and not sure whether or not to believe the scene in front of him. “I mean, ten out of ten for acting, but-”

“Ianto!” Rose cried, her voice a mess of tumultuous emotion that Ianto couldn’t, in his still-reeling brian, work out. She fell right back to the floor, sitting heavily next to him as she grabbed for his arm. “Ianto? What’s happening? You were - we all saw it. You were  _ dead! _ ”

Ianto managed to put a wry smile onto his fatigued face, turning towards her. He noted the tear tracks that ran down her face, the red eyes that indicated recent sadness, and suddenly realised that all he wanted to do was hug his best friend.

So he did.

“Shh,” he calmly whispered, pulling her tighter against him as he rocked them slowly and rubbed her back with his hand. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

“But you  _ weren’t -  _ you were dead!” she said back, voice shaking despite the absence of tears. Ianto could only imagine that she was feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything that had happened.

“I know, I don’t understand it either. But I’m here,” he promised, pulling away from her so he could grab her hand and guide it over his chest. “Feel. My heart’s beating. I’m alive, Rose.”

She grinned disbelievingly at Ianto, sniffing loudly as she tried to regain some composure. He appreciated her hug, the feeling of someone alive who cared for him being enough to ground him in reality for now, but his body still felt tired, as if he was missing a part of him. “Where’s…?” he began to ask. Ianto turned his eyes, searching for Jack, and suddenly every time Jack had returned from the dead and reached out for Ianto’s embrace made sense to him. All he wanted was to be held by Jack’s warm, caring arms.

But Jack was staring at him, frozen tears glistening in clear blue eyes that unsuccessfully tried to hide the fear and pain behind them. He was stuck on the spot, as pale as a sheet, looking entirely overwhelmed. They stayed locked in their gazes, Rose and John quiet beside them as they watched to see who would react first.

And then, with a creaky groaning noise, a blue box began to materialize, fading in and out of existence as it took away the attention of the four people. The second it landed, with a loud noise, the onlookers turned back to look at Jack. Ianto couldn’t at all discern what he was thinking, and didn’t pretend that the lack of warmth and the lack of an embrace didn’t hurt him heavily. His arms ached to be held by the man he cared so much for, but Jack turned away to look at the Tardis doors.

“I…” Jack spoke, voice rough. “I need a new shirt.”

He jerked his hand towards the ship, before pushing open the two doors as he practically fled the scene, racing into the Tardis. Ianto let out a quiet noise that could only be described as a whimper, but snapped his mouth shut immediately after, hoping nobody else heard. His chest clenched - but it was okay, because even without Jack here he had Rose, by his side, pulling him into another suffocating embrace.

“We should-” Ianto spoke, cutting off to catch his breath. So many things about the way Jack acted after death were suddenly making sense to him. “We should follow him. The Tardis-”

He pointed towards the ship, and Rose nodded, standing up and reaching her hands out to help guide Ianto upwards. He regained his footing, wobbling slightly. He saw John get up too, and nodded to him. He looked even paler than Jack, but dutifully moved forwards to step into the Tardis and hold the door open for them both.

“Rose!” a voice called from over the other side of the console. The Doctor hadn’t yet looked up, still fiddling with something that was sticking out of the centre of the ship. “Jack just ran off somewhere, I’m not sure how well he’s taking all of-”

The Doctor stopped short, staring at Ianto. He stared back, raising one eyebrow at the Time Lord, who every so slowly widened his mouth until he was grinning maniacally at him. “Well, that explains Jack, then,” he said, running over to the entrance of the Tardis where they were standing. “Ianto Jones! Welcome back to the land of the living. One question - do you have  _ any  _ idea what’s going on?”

Ianto shook his head, then paused as he considered his words, but shook his head once again, more forcefully. “No. I’ve no idea why this just happened,” he said, knowing his words were the truth, even if he had seen the same thing happen before.

“Righto,” the Doctor answered, giving him a stare as if he knew more than he was letting on. “Well, I’ve had my suspicions, but-”

“Doctor,” Rose interrupted, voice loud. The Doctor and Ianto turned around to stare at her, following her line of vision to look at John. His arm was hovering over his own Vortex Manipulator, caught like a deer in headlights. “We should sort him out, first.”

“Right you are, Rose,” the Doctor agreed, bounding towards the ex-Time Agent. “Ianto, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Ianto nodded, following the Doctor’s eyes to put a hand on John’s arm. He undid the buckle on the wrist-strap, ignoring the glare John sent him.

“I’ll take this, then,” he said, and undid the buckle on the wrist-strap, ignoring the glare John sent him.

“Just as I thought we were starting to get along, eye candy,” John muttered, rubbing his now-bare wrist. Ianto just smirked at him.

“Considering the irresponsibility you used with that device,” the Doctor chastised, coming over to take the Vortex Manipulator away from Ianto. “I can’t let you leave with it. I can, however, drop you anywhere you want, any time.”

John rubbed his chin in thought. “Anywhere, anywhen? To spend the rest of my life?” he mused, raising an eyebrow. “The nearest intergalactic space bar should do it. Reckon they’ll have enough transmats, or ships to steal. I mean,” he paused, looking at the Doctor’s frown. “Ships to buy.”

The Doctor gave him a highly unimpressed look, as if his decision was the wrong answer in his test. However, he did go back to the console and start to flick switches, albeit with less enthusiasm than usual. Ianto turned to look at John, realising they would soon be having to say goodbye once more.

The Tardis gave a groan, and then landed, stopping it’s motion. The Doctor clapped his hands together, walking towards the group. “Well, I suppose this is goodbye, James.”

“John,” Hart pointed out, but the Doctor didn’t even listen to his response. He strolled towards the door, opening it.

“This is goodbye then, John,” Rose spoke, patting his shoulder awkwardly. Ianto wondered what she thought about the ex-Time Agent in front of them, as despite thinking she would initially have disliked John as he was partly to blame for the events of the day, Rose didn’t appear to hold anything against him.

“Maybe I’ll see you around, maybe I won’t. Was sure nice  _ seeing  _ you, though,” he joked, smirking slightly. Rose rolled her eyes and moved to join the Doctor, leaving Ianto with John.

Ianto kicked his feet idly. “I would offer to get Jack for you, but something tells me he’s not…” he offered, shrugging his shoulders as he let his sentence trail off.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not exactly the first time he’s left without saying goodbye,” John said, chuckling light-heartedly. Ianto took one look at his face, his smile which tried to hide his hurt with humour, and pulled him into a tight hug.

“Woah, eye candy!” John exclaimed, but after a few seconds decided to accept what was happening and embrace it. Ianto grinned as he felt John’s arms close around his own back, and waited for a few more moments before he let go.

“Enjoy meeting me for real, in a few years time,” Ianto said, giving John a little shove towards the exit of the Tardis.

“Oh, I’m looking forward to it already…” John replied, his familiar leer returning to his face. Ianto rolled his eyes, and watched as John walked to where the Doctor and Rose were standing, giving them a two fingered salute and wink before leaving the ship. Ianto surprised himself at how disappointed he felt to see him go, and wondered if he would ever see Hart again. He tried to stop himself from worrying about that fact that the future Hart hadn’t seemed to recognise him. He used to be a Time Agent - he must have been pretending not to know Ianto to keep the integrity of the timelines... right?

“Ianto,” the Doctor said, walking back up towards the console. “I need you to explain everything that happened, from the moment you got shot to the moment you came back to life.”

Ianto took a deep breath, and began to speak.

Once his tale was over (sans love declaration in Javic’s arms) he looked back up at the Doctor, who had leant against the side of the console whilst he was speaking. He nodded, looking serious. “Well, it does make sense. I’ve had suspicions, definitely, but until today…”

Ianto cocked his head. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked.

“Wrong? Well,” the Doctor started, blowing air into his cheeks in thought. “I’d say quite a lot, if we’re being honest. Your timeline’s all off, for a start; it’s all squiggly and twisted when it should be straight, which I thought was just because this new face - different brain and limbs and weird perspectives on life, but then-”

“Doctor,” Rose cut in, sending him a glare. Ianto was thankful. The Time Lord was speaking quickly and easily, as if he was trying to distract them all from what he was really trying to say. “Can’t you just answer his question? Why did he come back to life?”

The Doctor stared at them, hands frozen in the last gesture he had been showing. “Right. Err, okay,” he restarted, voice calmer and slower than before. “I’m pretty sure you’ve become a fixed point in time and space.”

“Fixed point?” Ianto asked.

“Yeah. I should’ve noticed it straight away. Why didn’t I notice it straight away?” he muttered, before turning back to the others. “You’re a fixed point in time and space. You’re set in stone - you can’t  _ ever  _ be changed. It’s why you can’t die. You’re gonna stay, exactly as you are now, until… well, until forever, I guess.”

“Forever?” Rose echoed, looking worried.

“Forever.” The Doctor looked solemn. “I’ve never seen it happen to a person before, which  _ could  _ explain why you seem so weird…”

“Doctor,” Ianto began, his mind whirling. “Wh- why did this happen to me? Why me?”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, looking at Rose as he put his hands in his pockets. “Well. That’ll be Rose’s fault, I’m afraid. When she absorbed the heart of the Tardis, she cared so much for you that she couldn’t leave you lying dead on the floor. Some friend you’ve got there, Ianto.”

Rose paled, despite the way the Doctor was grinning at her. “My fault? Ianto, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ianto breathed, trying to comprehend just what this all meant to him. “You’ve saved me twice from dying now. I’m quite grateful for that.”

She looked at him, before her legs began to move, and the next thing Ianto knew was the tight, warm embrace that Rose was pulling him into. He let his worries about the consequences of this all wash away, content to save it for the sleepless nights he would no doubt have soon. For now, he was alive and hugging Rose, and that was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We will force you to like John Hart whether you want to or not... And there we have the conclusion of this long, epic double episode!!! Next week we shall get right back into doctor who canon, starting at New Earth (another one of my, Remi's, episodes!) 
> 
> How did you like the ending to this episode? What are your thoughts? How do you think New Earth's gonna go after the end of this episode? Feel free to leave comments below - we'd love to hear!
> 
> Find us on tumblr @garknessandbones and @thirteeninafez


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